


Forget Me Not

by Slow_Burn_Sally



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Talk About Brain Injury and Accidents, but no details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:54:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 34,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25926964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Slow_Burn_Sally/pseuds/Slow_Burn_Sally
Summary: Gabriel and Beelzebub are very put out after the apocalypse doesn't happen. They decide to punish Aziraphale and Crowley by taking their memories and powers away so that they forget each other.I've never written this trope before, and this is definitely inspired by a great fic that I cannot now find that has them getting together in 1941 and getting caught and having their memories erased, and it's unique and amazing and I'm not sure the author ever finished it. My first born child goes to whomever can find it for me.[Update 8/18] IT HAS BEEN FOUND! Thank you SonglordsBug for finding it for me!!Anyway, hope you enjoy my fic :DRegular updates to come!Thank you emilycare for being my awesome plot idea-person and beta reader. <3 <3 <3
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 105
Kudos: 125
Collections: Tip Top Stories





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Close to Home, So Far Away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19430191) by [Mercury Starlight (WoolandWater)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WoolandWater/pseuds/Mercury%20Starlight). 



“So that’s it is it? We’re just done now are we? One little brat says boo to his father and the whole thing we worked for for millennia just falls apart like toilet paper in the rain?” The archangel Gabriel was not happy. Worse, he was very very unhappy. So unhappy in fact that one could easily say he was enraged. Disappointed. Incensed. There is a whole, long list of things Gabriel felt in this moment, and none of them were pleasant. 

Not that Beelzebub was helping. They sat across from him in the dismal coffee shop where the archangel and lord of Hell had decided to meet, and regarded him with bored eyes from under their black fringe. 

“You seem awfully calm for someone who just had to stand down ten million restless demon soldiers,” Gabriel remarked, hoping to goad them into some semblance of emotion that wasn’t boredom or mild irritability. 

“I’m not calm,” Beelzebub replied, their cool look morphing into something of a glare as they sat up straighter in the booth and unfolded their arms. “I’m just not wasting energy on getting all worked up like you are. Angels..” they said in a tone Gabriel didn’t appreciate in the slightest. They huffed and didn’t finish the sentence. 

“I’m not worked up!” Gabriel snapped. “I’m just really pissed off that all our hard work was for absolutely nothing. Thousands of years we spent planning. All the resources. All the prep work! We were finally gonna put an end to the feud over who was better, over who wins. And let's face it, you and I would have received very impressive promotions regardless of who won. War always makes people look to higher ups for answers. People would be begging us to take charge and tell them what to do.”

“I know all this. You think I don’t know this?” Beelzebub was scowling a little now. This made Gabriel feel better, because at least he’d made some progress toward ruining their mood. “But it’s over,” they continued irritably. “The stupid angel and the stupid demon made a royal mess of things, and now we’re back to square one. No point in crying over spilt...whatever it is humans cry over when they spill it... Beer?”

At the mention of Aziraphale and Crowley, Gabriel’s jaw clenched and his fingers tightened into fists. “They made fools out of us,” he said through gritted teeth. He recalled vividly how it had felt to be so close to his goal. So close to finally getting rid of irritating, gently yet persistently rebellious Aziraphale. The bumbling angel had caused no end of trouble for Heaven over the years. And Hell had been on the verge of exterminating that horrible excuse for a demon. 

It had been so satisfying, watching Aziraphale walk toward the pillar of burning hellfire. Waiting to hear his screams of pain, waiting to watch him blacken and char and drift away on currents of superheated air. 

And then...nothing. Nothing had happened at all. The cheeky bastard had just stretched, luxuriating in the flames as if sinking into a warm bath. That idiot principality had made a fool out of Gabriel and the others. But mostly Gabriel, who’d cringed like a coward at the angel, spitting fire at them like some sort of plump, grandfatherly dragon from within the inferno. 

To hear Beelzebub tell it, it hadn’t gone much better for them downstairs. The demon Crowley had splashed about happily in his bath of holy water, completely unharmed. He’d asked for a rubber duck for God’s sake! Beelzebub may have been the most unflappable demon Gabriel had ever met, but he could still remember the tremor in their voice as they’d recounted what had transpired over the interdepartmental telephone. They’d sounded very shaken up.

“Yes, they did make fools of us,” agreed Beelzebub judiciously. “It’s a shame we can’t just hunt them down and discorporate them permanently.”

“You heard our superiors,” Gabriel said with a frown. “We were not to exact any violence against them. No discorporation. No torture. No swarms of locusts. They were very clear.” 

“Mr. L is still in a horrible mood,” Beelzebub remarked. “He has to listen to your boss now. He’s crawled away somewhere to lick his wounds and said if we go near the demon, we’ll all spend a millennia in the deepest pit, being forced to fill out tax forms.”

Gabriel thought for a moment. A server came over to ask if they wanted anything and Beelzebub gave her a migraine with a wave of the hand and sent her wandering away confused. 

“I think we’re going about this the wrong way,” Gabriel said slowly, his brow furrowed and his mouth twisted in concentration. “We keep focusing on all the violent things we want to do to the angel and the demon. But what if we were to… I don’t know, get creative? There must be all sorts of punishments that aren’t particularly violent. Stuff that can’t be traced back to us.” 

“Hmmm,” Beelzebub appeared to seriously consider the matter for a moment. “They do seem to like one another very much don’t they?” the small demon remarked thoughtfully. “They spent a lot of time drinking and canoodling behind our backs. What if we made it so that they sicked up any time they tried to drink alcohol?”

“I like that, but it’s not painful enough,” Gabriel replied. “They’d just start doing something else for fun. No, I want to punish them in ways they can’t get around. I want them to really suffer for what they’ve put us through.” 

“What if we made them hate each other?” Beelzebub offered, seeming to get into the swing of coming up with possible punishments. They’d started to grin a little bit in a very devious sort of way.   
“Worse,” Gabriel said, the light of sudden inspiration gleaming in his violet eyes. “What if we made it so...so they don’t remember each other at all…”

“Oh wow,” Beelzebub’s mouth fell open just a bit in surprise, which Gabriel found flattering. He never got to see them off their game. “That’s really messed up,” they said. “I like it!” 

“That way they’d never be able to go to fancy dinners or drink wine or chat or walk around in the park anymore. They’d be down there, all by themselves, just as God and Mr. L intended all along. Why...we’d be doing our superiors a favor!”

“If anyone asked, we could just pretend we thought we saw a memo telling us to do it. By Satan! It’s a fantastic idea!” Beelzebub was fired up now, rubbing their hands together and grinning from ear to ear. 

“I think this could really work! We wipe their memories and leave them down there. Alone, and lonely. No more best friends. No more fun times. Just an angel and a demon. Hanging around with no purpose in life. They’d never know what happened. And they’d never see one another again!” Gabriel was really warming up to this idea. 

“Why not take it even further?’ asked Beelzebub, leaning forward in their booth and fixing Gabriel with a devious look. “Why not take their powers away? We can do it right? We can put a damper on anyone’s powers if they abuse them. I did it just last week to a demon who refused to stop badgering me about vacation time. He was a real pain in my arse, constantly pestering me with questions that he really should have addressed to Demon Services. I snapped my fingers and took his powers away to shut him up. It worked too. He burst into tears and ran off and I haven’t seen him since. Without their powers or their memories, they’d just be….Well...they’d be just like…”

“Humans,” remarked Gabriel. “They’d be just like humans. I love it!”


	2. Chapter 2

Crowley woke up slowly and stretched, sticking his arms and legs out from under the covers and groaning at the stiffness in his joints. With some effort he sat up on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through his shoulder length copper hair. It was Wednesday. At least he was pretty sure it was Wednesday. The days seemed to blend together. It had been probably a year now since he’d woken up in hospital with no idea who he was. 

The polite doctor, Dr. Archer, a tall, broach shouldered American chap, had told him that his name was Anthony J. Crowley, and that he was a wealthy plant specialist who lived in a nice flat in Mayfair, and that he’d made quite a pretty penny being a horticulturist to the stars. This had all sounded vaguely familiar to Crowley. He  _ did _ , he realized upon perusal of his recent memories, the few he could recall, seem to have a good bit of knowledge on plant life. And upon returning to his flat, he found a large room full of plants and a bunch of very pretentious, uncomfortable looking furniture. It was just the type of flat a wealthy quasi-celebrity would own. 

He’d apparently had a bit of a drinking problem. Dr. Archer had informed him that he’d been pulled out of a flaming wreck of a car along the side of the M25 at 3 o’clock in the morning a week prior, stinking of alcohol, and that despite not having any significant physical injuries, he’d been in a coma for a solid week. He was lucky to be alive, Dr. Archer had said, his eyes going stern for a moment as he lifted the top sheet of Crowley’s medical paperwork and peered at something written there. Apparently the coma had left him with a severe case of amnesia. He had no memory of his past life, his family (whomever they might be) or his name. He’d been informed that he was a bachelor, age 48, whose parents had died several years prior, and that he was an only child.

This essentially meant that he had no one and knew nothing. It was a daunting thing to discover. But, upon entering his flat for the first time since returning from the hospital, he had to admit that what he’d been told made sense. The flat was austere and pretentious. There were no photos of nieces or nephews, nor of his parents, nor of any lovers or partners. There was however a recycling bin full of empty wine bottles and a closet full of the sorts of slinky black clothes worn very often by the type of person Crowley now believed himself to be. 

Even though he knew his first name was Anthony, it felt strange to think of himself as an Anthony. It was a name that felt somehow impermanent and meaningless.  _ Crowley _ however felt far more familiar. And so he’d gone by Crowley. Not that anyone was around who cared. He apparently had no friends. 

One day, a mad American hippy lady and an old woman with an impressively saucy vocabulary had approached him at the market, and insisted that  _ they  _ were his friends. He still remembered their disappointed expressions when he’d looked at them blankly and said he had no idea who they were. They’d grown quite agitated then, showing him pictures of someone on their phone that he didn’t recognize. They kept pointing to the picture and saying an unfamiliar name over and over in a very urgent fashion. “A-something.” He’d been unable to understand what they’d said, or what they were trying to tell them, and eventually, after a lot of impatient huffs, when both women were close to tears, he’d begged off, saying he had to go. They’d looked so crestfallen. It had been really upsetting. He’d come home wanting a drink, which had only gone toward supporting the notion that he’d had a drinking problem. He’d had a cup of tea instead.

The very next morning, the newspapers at all the shops around his apartment had a story splashed across the front page saying that a duo of pickpockets and schemers, looking like an innocent mother and daughter were responsible for a series of thefts in the area. And there they were, the pretty young woman and the wild, red haired older lady, looking very devious indeed. Crowley felt a stab of disappointment. Even if they’d been thieves, he might have wanted to see them again. They were the only people he’d spoken to in the past year, and they’d seemed very friendly. Also, something told him that hanging about with thieves wasn’t all that shocking to the Anthony Crowley he apparently was under his memory loss. He had a feeling that Anthony Crowley didn’t often do things by the book. Still, he supposed it was for the best that he didn’t see them again. He was in a somewhat fragile state, and hanging about with liars and crooks was probably not the best idea.

The days had dragged into weeks and then months. He got a phone call now and then from a person who called themselves his agent, and said they were named Beezie and that they went by they/them pronouns. He chatted with Beezie now and then about new horticulture gigs. He went to art galleries and tended to their plants. He went to mansions and tended to their plants. He went to fancy office buildings and...yes, tended to their plants. He found it unusual that he’d fail to remember a single thing about this life, but that he had an exhaustive memory of the care and feeding of all sorts of plant life. It was a blessing really. He found that spending time around green, leafy things to be very soothing. There was a simplicity and a deep sort of peace to be found in his greenhouse. And the job gave him something with which to fill his time. He found though that strangely, he had a strong urge to yell at the plants when they didn’t grow fast enough. Funny thing that. He’d have to talk to a therapist about that one. 

Before he knew it, it had been a year. A year with no memories. A year spent wondering who he was. Over the course of those twelve months, he’d gotten to know himself better. Not through his memories, as they were still frustratingly beyond his reach, but he learned things about himself by how he lived. He realized he liked napping. A lot. That he didn’t eat much, and strangely that when he forgot to eat for several days, he didn’t even get very hungry. He subsisted off of cups of tea and coffee and the rare biscuit or sandwich from a corner shop. His refrigerator stayed empty and so did his cupboards. He realized that he liked wearing the slinky black clothes that he had in his closet and that despite the fact that he had a very pleasing set of amber-brown eyes, that he felt compelled to wear a pair of dark sunglasses whenever he left the house. He also found a strange little snake tattoo under his right sideburn, next to his ear. Funny place for a tattoo, but he’d seen them in weirder places on other people. 

And so it went. The days kept trudging by. He was lonely, and sad a lot of the time, but also, he had purpose, and money, and a nice place to stay. It could be worse. He had dim memories of much worse times. Maybe not for him, but for other people? There were plagues and floods and poverty and violence out in the world, and he seemed to not be experiencing any of those things, and so he should count himself lucky.

He couldn’t explain why he had a massive, stone bird sculpture in his foyer, or a rather homoerotic statue of two winged men wrestling in his sitting room, but they became familiar sights as the months passed. He had a feeling that maybe he was gay, but he wasn’t sure. Regardless of his orientation, he certainly had his head turned by stocky blond men when he saw them out on the street. 

Feeling amorous hadn’t been a thing he’d experienced much though. Dating seemed like too much work, and the thought of removing all of his clothes and lying down with someone and doing messy things with his body, while somewhat appealing in theory, also made him feel exhausted and depressed. 

None of his observations explained why he had no friends, or why he felt as if a huge part of his life was somehow missing, but he’d gathered enough broken pieces together to form a sort of identity for himself. His name was Anthony J. Crowley (he was unsure what the ‘J’ stood for) he was a wealthy horticulturist, and he lived alone in an austere flat in London, Mayfair. It was enough he supposed. It would have to be enough. 


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale Fell slotted the book home into its space on the shelf at the top of the ladder where he was currently perched. It slid in with a satisfying soft scraping sound and a thunk as it hit the back of the shelf. Something about the feel and the sound of shelving books made him happy in a subtle way. Not much else made him happy these days. 

He’d woken up in hospital a year ago now, and had been quite surprised to be told that he had a severe case of amnesia from falling off a ladder in his shop and hitting his head. The bump had healed up nicely while he’d lain in a coma for a solid week. True to what the doctor, Dr. Beeze had said, he couldn’t remember a single thing about himself. He was told that he was a fifty year old bachelor who ran a bookshop in Soho. Apparently, he had no friends or family to speak of. His parents had died of natural causes several years ago and he’d been an only child. This all felt strangely familiar. 

Upon walking into the bookshop, a massive, red brick building on the corner of a busy intersection, he’d felt instantly at home. If he remembered one thing, it was that he must love books, for just the sight of the massive shelves, stretching away from the front door of the shop made his shoulders relax and his heart beat slow from a gallop to a canter to a walk. Upon returning from the hospital, he’d spent the entire afternoon alone in his locked shop, running his fingers reverently over the spines of the neatly shelved books and getting to know where everything was. 

He found that despite the fact that he owned a bookshop, he seemed loath to open up the shop and sell any actual books. The minute the bell rang over the shop door and the first customer had walked in, he’d felt a strange flash of irritation at the intrusion. As if it weren’t a shop at all, but rather his own extensive, private collection of books that he just happened to keep in a building that had the words “bookshop” emblazoned on the front in white paint. 

Still, he had to make a living didn’t he? He had an impressive bank balance, but one never knew what the future might bring, so it did behoove him to actually sell a book now and then. People seemed to know him well, his customers anyway, and he’d had several awkward conversations with a few of them, wherein he pretended to understand their obscure references to past conversations, and basically smiled and nodded amiably, praying they didn’t notice how lost he’d become. 

There was a sweet little kitchenette at the back of the shop, and a cupboard full of boxes and tins of every imaginable sort of tea, along with a selection of tea cups and mugs in a wide array of different sizes and shapes. One, particularly charming mug had angel wings for a handle and he immediately took to it for his afternoon cup of tea and morning cup of coffee and random cups of cocoa he indulged in when it got chilly out. He discovered that he had quite the appetite, a fact that was supported by how soft he was around the middle. He particularly liked sweets, and found himself strolling by the local bakery (where he was greeted warmly and by name) several times a week to pick up fresh pastries and loaves of homemade bread. 

He’d been at the shop only a few days when a young American woman and her boyfriend, a shy, soft spoken gangly sort of lad, had stopped by and insisted that he knew them and that they were his friends. Such a thing, from the perspective of having no memory of them, seemed preposterous and he was afraid he wasn’t as polite toward them as he should have been. They kept showing him pictures on their phone of someone he did not recognize and saying a name over and over again that made no sense to him. Eventually he’d politely and firmly told them to leave. They’d left, looking so incredibly crestfallen that he’d almost stopped them, almost asked them to stay for a cup of tea, but truth be told, he was tired and sad and overwhelmed and had not had the energy for company. Especially company that insisted that they knew him when he did not ever remember seeing them before. 

The next morning, he’d seen a special report on the news stating that a pair of book thieves were roaming London, stealing rare first editions, and low and behold, there were the young couple, looking very suspicious and threatening in a grainy black and white security camera photo. Aziraphale had rushed about his shop, making sure they hadn’t managed to take anything of value in the short time they’d been there. It was a good thing he’d resisted the urge to invite them to stay! 

The days crept by, and he supposed he was happy. He had all of his basic needs met, and so he should have been happy. He occasionally received calls from a man named Gabriel Archer, who told Aziraphale that he was his financial analyst and consultant for when he bought and sold large numbers of books or very rare first editions. Dr. Archer was an ancient literature professor with a degree in finance, and he had a lot of experience with literature of a biblical nature (though he seemed strangely lost on anything written after the twelfth century). He was quite helpful, answering any and all of Aziraphale’s financial questions about where to invest and how much to save. He was really the only person in Aziraphale’s life, outside of the regular book customers and pastry chefs and food delivery people, who all seemed to know him by name. 

Above and beyond the fact that he had money and a comfortable flat above the shop, he was still very lonely. He felt as if there was a large part of him that was missing. As if his life had somehow been fuller, better before his fall from the ladder. 

Speaking of ladders, it was strange that he didn’t feel at all nervous around them, and the very first day back from the hospital, he found himself climbing to the top of a rather tall one to look at some books on a high shelf without a second thought. He had no memory of his fall, but he read somewhere that traumatic amnesia worked that way. You didn’t often remember the event that caused the memory loss. He made sure to be extra careful when he did climb ladders, but there was no resulting fear from being high up on a rickety wooden structure with wheels on the bottom. Perhaps he was just a particularly brave person? 

Another strange thing was the snapping. He’d been sitting in a comfortable armchair in the shop, the day after he’d returned home from hospital. He’d had a cup of tea at his elbow that was down to the dregs and he’d wished to drink a fresh cup. And so he’d snapped his fingers. Nothing happened of course. He was not at all sure why he believed that snapping his fingers would instantly make a hot cup of tea appear on the little side table next to his chair where the empty one now sat. He looked at the teacup as if it had done something offensive by remaining empty, and then he’d had to sternly chide himself for his laziness. Perhaps he’d had some sort of maid or housekeeper before his accident who’d come running whenever he’d snapped his fingers? It seemed unlikely. He just wasn’t the sort of person who enjoyed having someone cater to his every whim, and much preferred to do things on his own. At least that’s what he  _ felt _ to be true. He supposed he couldn’t be sure, being that he’d lost all his memories.

It took him several weeks to stop snapping absently every time he wanted something. How strange. Almost like a tic of some sort. 

After a year of this funny sort of life, he developed a routine. He’d wake in the morning, have himself some coffee in his angel wing mug and a croissant or a muffin or two. Then he’d categorize and reshelve books for most of the morning and would deal with the trickle of irritatingly curious customers until about noon, when he’d close up the shop for a couple of hours and walk to a local restaurant for lunch. He found he was particularly fond of sushi. This hunch was born out by the fact that all the wait staff and the chef knew him by name and greeted him in Japanese, which surprisingly...he understood. After lunch, he’d return to the shop for more reading and reshelving and more answering of questions from more irritating customers. Then he’d take an afternoon walk over to St. James’s Park and feed the ducks for a while. This activity always made him feel a strange mix of comforted and extra lonely for some reason he could not fathom. 

He’d close the shop relatively early and at varying times and would have a nice dinner of takeaway curry or Chinese, and then he’d settle in with a glass of wine to read for the rest of the night. He supposed the fact that he never slept should have struck him as unusual, but it did not. Sleeping felt entirely unnecessary, and three whole days passed before he even thought to notice that he hadn’t slept a wink. Shrugging, he accepted that this was just how he was built. 

The days drifted by, and there was still this empty space inside his heart that he couldn’t quite find a way to fill. He tried jogging (and quickly abandoned that particular activity). He’d tried baking, which was enjoyable, but didn’t make the ache go away. He’d tried going to the cinema. Tried crocheting. Tried the museum. He’d even gone on a few dates after creating an online dating profile on a popular site. With men surprisingly. That was something he hadn’t known about himself until he’d felt a certain sort of interested spark in his nether regions upon spotting a handsome red haired man walking in the park one day. He apparently liked men. And liked redheads most of all. Still, the men who took him to dinner did nothing for him. He felt as if they were rather dull and childlike, and after a few outings, he’d given up and taken down his dating profile. 

The hole in his heart persisted, making him feel a little colder, a little sadder every day. He started losing interest in trying new pastries...started reading less...started closing up the shop for longer and longer each day. It was a slow sort of erosion that worked to chip away at his happiness until he felt almost like just crawling into bed and not coming out again.

The days had started blending together, and it was on one such day, indistinguishable from the one before it, that he heard the bell above the door ring. This of course made him a little irritable, and he quickly stepped to the front of the shop, fully intending to show the (likely) obnoxious customer back out onto the street as soon as possible. 

Instead of ushering the unwanted patron from his shop however, he found himself stopping dead in his tracks at the sight of the person standing in the foyer. 

He had red hair. Which of course was a thing that Aziraphale noticed, being that it had a strange affect on him, both erotic and soothing at the same time. This red haired man however, was somehow very different from the other men Aziraphale had seen around town. He did not look boring or childish at all. 

This was not to say that he looked particularly  _ mature _ either. He had about him the air of a man trying to dress far younger than his age in an attempt to hang onto the wild fun and sex appeal of a youth that was likely thirty years gone at this point. But, while this desperation to cling to the successful mating strategies of one’s twenties, far beyond what is considered tasteful was off-putting in most people, it was somehow genuinely appealing in this stranger.

He was wearing a slinky, dark gray silk shirt that clung rather pleasingly to his long, thin frame, and a pair of the tightest black jeans Aziraphale had ever seen (though with the majority of his memories gone, he didn’t have much to compare them to). The man’s dark copper hair fell in gentle waves to his narrow shoulders, and he was wearing a pair of sunglasses. Sunglasses he had not taken off upon entering a somewhat dark shop from the brightness of the day outside. 

Aziraphale momentarily forgot how to breath. This happened sometimes. He’d be sitting in his chair of an evening with a book, and notice that his chest had ceased to rise and fall. It was a thing, like the not sleeping and the incessant snapping that he understood to be part of who he was underneath his memory loss, and so he didn’t fret over it too much. Now however, when his breathing stopped as he looked at the ginger haired vision that stood in the front of his shop, it was for an entirely different reason than being relaxed at home with a good book. 

The man looked up at him and froze. This was particularly evident, because before he’d done so, he’d been engaged in some constant form of subtle movement. His hips swayed, his shoulders weaved, his hands were sensually caressing the spines of a row of books on a shelf near the door. He had the languid, semi-constant movement of a dancer, and there was a distinct reptilian quality about him that made his sudden and complete lack of movement even more evident. Now, when he turned his face and the dark circles of his sunglasses to look at Aziraphale, all that movement stopped abruptly. 

“Erm...hello” Aziraphale said, very uncertainly, wringing his hands together in front of his old fashioned velveteen waistcoat. “May I help you?” All thoughts of showing this particular customer to the door vanished like mist under a summer sun. 

“Uh,” said the stranger. He seemed to be struggling to find words, so Aziraphale spoke up again to save him from standing there, frozen in place, not speaking.

“I could maybe recommend something?” He suggested, indicating the walls and walls of bookshelves with an absent wave of his hand. “Are you looking for a gift for someone? Or perhaps just some light reading?”

The man’s mouth fell open. He looked as if he wanted to respond, but that he somehow couldn’t find the wherewithal to speak. 

Then he did something unexpected. He spun himself around and ran from the shop. 

Aziraphale watched the door bang softly shut behind him, the ringing of the bell sounding strangely hollow in the empty space the man had just occupied, not two seconds before. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

Crowley fled the shop. One could say simply that he “left” the shop, but to him, it felt like he was fleeing something. Something that would come after him and grab him and eat him alive. And that perhaps, and this was the interesting part, that wasn’t such a bad way to die. 

He’d only gone in in the first place out of boredom. The sort of desperate boredom one experiences when one has watched all the television programs and been to all the places that are supposed to alleviate such feelings and yet still suffers from a lack of entertainment. The kind of boredom that makes a person turn to books for relief. 

He hadn’t expected the bookshop owner. 

He had been wholly unprepared for the bookshop owner. 

He’d heard the man approach by way of a thok-thok sound of a pair of sensible shoes making their way toward the foyer, and had prepared a mental image of what a bookshop owner should look like. A balding, graying man in his sixties. Or perhaps a twenty year old uni student, hired to watch the shop while the owner was away. Or maybe a spinsterly, middle aged lady? He knew he was relying on book-people stereotypes and had silently chided himself on putting this mysterious person into a box before he’d even had a chance to look at them, but...his depressing life after his car accident had made him cynical. He didn’t particularly care what the bookshop owner looked like in any case. He was just here in a last ditch effort to try and spark some interest in anything. Anything to break up the gray monotony of loneliness and confusion he struggled through day after day. 

And then he’d seen the man, and all thoughts of stereotypes had flown out the window. Well, perhaps not all thoughts of stereotypes. The man wore very outdated clothing. A threadbare, ancient looking waistcoat over a light blue shirt with a...bowtie of all things. A tartan one. If it were possible to find a way to look more non-threatening than this gentleman, Crowley would be hard pressed to come up with it. 

And yet, there was something about him that spoke of a sort of hidden strength. He was a thick bodied person, with a rounded belly and thick legs and a charming little double chin and plump hands, and he was...well...there was no other way to put it...he was stunningly handsome. His hair, a ridiculous white gold mess atop his head, stuck out in all directions like some sort of wild halo, and he regarded Crowley with large, sea colored eyes that looked somehow wiser and older than his probably 50ish years. Why someone who was already clearly middle aged looked so much older than middle aged was a curious thing, but at that moment, Crowley was not able to fully process complex thoughts such as old souls and hidden strengths. These observations flitted distantly across the surface of his conscious mind as he stared, open mouthed at the most stunningly attractive creature he’d ever laid eyes upon.

The man spoke, and Crowley didn’t hear a word he said. He did hear the soft, pleasing tone of his voice however, and it sent a pleasant shiver down the length of his spine. 

Get out of here before you make a complete fool of yourself, his mind, what little of it still functioned, was yelling warnings at him that he really thought it best to heed under the present circumstances. And so he’d done just that. He’d turned and left. Like a coward. Like an insane person. 

Once he was back out on the street, trying to calm his heart beat and his ragged breathing, he realized that he’d just done something extremely rude. But he dared not go back to the shop and apologize. He didn’t dare go within ten feet of the bookshop owner, for fear that he’d faint and fall down like some heroine from a romantic novel. 

Crowley walked swiftly down the street in a headlong fashion, not really thinking of where he was going, just needing to get away. He was unsure why. Upon meeting the most attractive man one had ever seen, you would think a person might want to stick around and get to know the bloke better. But to Crowley, whose nonchalance and casual cool was apparently a default setting and a very reliable defense mechanism, this particular gentleman was very intimidating. Crowley had found it impossible to retain his usual slinky off handedness around the bookshop owner. Something about the other man’s face and his large, stormy eyes had woken up something very familiar and also terrifying inside Crowley. It was an unusual mix of feelings. Awe and confusion, mixed in incongruously with a sort of warm familiarity. 

Only he’d never met the man before, so how on earth could he seem so familiar? 

There were some very unusual things Crowley noticed about himself that had clued him in to some glimmer of his life before his memories had been erased. The way he did not like to enter churches or places of worship. The way he had urges to perform minor acts of annoyance and inconvenience to the people around him, not for any mean spirited reason, but because the thought made him feel strangely joyful. Why would annoying people make him happy? 

Also there was the fact that he sometimes forgot to breath. Or that he didn’t really need to eat. Or that he would periodically snap his fingers when he wanted something, even a thing that was quite impossible to obtain from within his flat in Mayfair. One night, he’d wanted a particular vintage of red that he’d seen advertised in a wine magazine the week before. It was very expensive and being kept in a wine cellar somewhere in Paris, and he’d snapped his fingers, thinking that it would appear inside his flat. What a strange thought. Perhaps he had been more spoiled as a horticulturist to the stars than he’d originally realized? Perhaps he’d had a personal assistant that ran and fetched him whatever he wanted? It seemed unlikely. Horticulturists ranked on the cool scale just slightly above librarians. Not known for being front and center in the celebrity magazines really. 

All of these things nagged at him, tugged at a part of his mind that felt hazy and blank. He supposed that was the way of amnesia. A person could slowly regain their memories (though Dr. Archer had reassured him pretty adamantly that Crowley would not regain his) in dribs and drabs. Crowley had held out hope that his memories would in fact return, regardless of what his doctor had told him in the hospital when he’d awoken, confused and empty feeling, a year ago now.   
He ducked into a cafe, just to have something to do other than flee the bookshop, and ordered a coffee and sat with it at a window overlooking the street. He didn’t drink the coffee, but in the unspoken law of coffee shops everywhere, it earned him the right to sit and stare out at the passersby for the next three hours if he wanted to. 

Why was he so shook up by the sight of one, ordinary bookshop owner? The man hadn’t been an adonis. He hadn’t looked like some sort of heartthrob from the cinema. He’d been plump and old fashioned and soft spoken and very polite, and yet Crowley could not for the life of him get the man’s face out of his mind. To be fair, though the bookshop owner did have a bit of a distracted, bookish uncle look about him, he was rather handsome. That fact was undeniable. Handsome and….soft. 

For some reason the memory of his face, with his glowing hair and hazel eyes had imparted upon Crowley a distinct impression of softness. Like clouds. Or ice cream. Or a nice, comfy mattress. He seemed like the sort who’d be heaven to snuggle with. That particular thought made Crowley go a bit hot in the cheeks, and he scolded himself for thinking something so intimate about such a complete and total stranger. 

He was very attracted to this man though. That was undeniable. And what was even more profound and compelling, he realized that the empty space inside him had disappeared.


	5. Chapter 5

Aziraphale felt an unusually sharp pang of disappointment when the mysterious stranger fled his shop. For flee he did. He didn’t simply turn and leave. He  _ bolted _ . This fact didn’t do Aziraphale’s self esteem any favors. Apparently, he was the sort of man to make devastatingly handsome redheads feel the pressing need to be somewhere else. Ah well. It had seemed too good to be true in any case. Seeing the man, standing there, looking like some leading man in a romantic comedy. It had given Aziraphale hope in a way he realized he’d been sorely missing. It was only when the sadness and emptiness that categorized his days had eased up suddenly upon seeing the enticing looking stranger, that he realized how much he had been suffering under the pall of those feelings, and for how long. Much like how one realizes just how tired one had been when one finally sits for the first time after a long day on one’s feet. 

For Aziraphale, seeing the red haired man in his shop had felt like sitting down. Resting. 

It wasn’t all restful of course. Underneath that “at last” feeling, so strange and incongruous when you held it up against the fact that he’d never seen the man before, was a thrilling sort of excitement. This person looked like  _ trouble _ , but in the best way possible. Like he could cause a lot of mischief. And Aziraphale realized quite suddenly that he could do with some mischief. His life was so ordered and methodical. He wondered at this feeling of rebelliousness that cropped up at the sight of the red haired stranger. 

Well, none of that mattered now. The man had run off. He’d clearly not been as impressed by Aziraphale as Aziraphale had been by him. What a disappointment. Aziraphale felt the suffocating loneliness of his life threatening to consume him again, and he couldn’t bear it. Not for a moment longer. He grabbed his coat and decided to take a walk somewhere new. Somewhere he’d never been before (or at least where he didn’t remember being before). 

He left the shop and walked purposefully in a new direction. For some reason, he always went left when leaving to go anywhere, as left was west, and west/southwest was the direction of his favorite shops, and the park, and the tube station he used when he traveled a bit farther afield. Everything in his life lay at a left turn out of the front door of his shop. Today however, he turned right. Why had he never turned right before? This seemed like a strange thing, that he’d never gone in a different direction when leaving the shop to go somewhere. There were probably plenty of interesting things in that direction. Mayfair and Hyde Park. He was certain there were plenty of delightful little bakeries and coffee shops and art galleries to the right. 

He turned right and a new world opened up to him. The street looked different. The buildings aligned themselves in an unfamiliar pattern (based chiefly on the fact that they looked nothing like the buildings when he turned left). The clouds drifting overhead caught the light in different ways. There were different road signs. Why had Aziraphale not just done things differently more often? Why didn’t he just go somewhere new or go see a very different sort of film than he usually did (he had a penchant for romantic comedies and period piece dramas). 

He started to whistle as he walked, looking at the new shops, the new street signs, thinking  _ perhaps I shall try a new bakery today. Or a new vintage of wine tonight _ . He was not naive enough to think that what  _ he _ considered new and exciting would count as all that big a deal to anyone else. He was a creature of habit and so while some people went to Morocco to do something new, he decided to try the vanilla pound cake instead of the chocolate tort, and as a result, considered himself very adventurous indeed. 

He passed by a coffee shop that looked inviting and stepped inside, making his way immediately to the desert case. There were an entirely new and different assortment of cakes and tarts and biscuits on display under the sloping glass near the register, and he felt a small renewed spark of excitement at the sight of them. He’d just decided on a blueberry pound cake when a flash of sunlight made him look up and toward the window, and he saw the man.

The red haired man. He was sitting on a stool at a counter overlooking the street, shoulders hunched, head down, but it was undeniably him. Aziraphale would recognize those auburn waves and those skinny legs anywhere. The man was  _ here _ . Here in the completely random coffee shop Aziraphale had decided to visit, on his completely random quest to see new things. It couldn’t be coincidence, could it? 

But what was Aziraphale to do? The man had fled his presence not ten minutes ago. He couldn’t very well walk up and say hello. A second time? That would be pure folly. Aziraphale, for all that he had no memories of what his life had been like prior to a year ago knew that he was a very likable person. This was made abundantly clear by the way most people smiled warmly when they saw him, at how they beamed from ear to ear when he spoke to them. People liked Aziraphale. It was an unassailable fact. The only person in his life that didn’t seem to have a strong feeling about him either way was his agent, Gabriel Archer. Archer seemed very guarded and polite when talking on the phone with Aziraphale. Not rude. Just not as hopelessly charmed as everyone else who met Aziraphale seemed to be. 

As a result of this universal likability, Aziraphale had developed a relatively healthy sense of his own positive worth. He was a confident person. It was unusual for him to be confronted with someone he was so intrigued by, who quite clearly did not like him. Or, who at the very least, needed urgently to leave his company mere seconds after meeting him. It was daunting to consider that the only man he’d been drawn to since his fall off the ladder had run away so quickly. And for no apparent reason. All Aziraphale had done was to do what he’d always done. Approached the man and asked if he could be of assistance in finding a book. 

Now, Aziraphale stared at the man’s narrow back and fretted. Should he walk up and try to say hello again? At the very least, it would prove once and for all that the man had some sort of active and instant dislike to him if he were to flee a second time. 

Unfortunately, Aziraphale was unsure that his ego could stand taking such a direct hit at this point. He had been feeling extra fragile and extra lonely lately. To have the one man he thought he’d very much like to get to know better, turn tail and run a  _ second _ time in the space of ten minutes felt like a bit too much to bear at the moment. But, he also couldn’t bring himself to leave. 

He decided to stay, and to make himself as obvious as possible, in the hopes that the fascinating man might notice him and come over (or flee again) of his own accord. That way, all Aziraphale would be guilty of was purchasing a cup of coffee and sitting somewhat nearby a stranger in a coffee shop. He would not be intrusive, or rude, or presumptuous. 

As far as it being an effective plan to make new friends, it lacked many things, but it was a start. He walked up to the cashier and, in a voice that was a touch louder than he’d normally used, he ordered a piece of the blueberry pound cake and a cup of earl grey tea. He shot a quick look at the man sitting by the window and was pleased to see him in the process of turning around to look back into the coffee shop. Knowing that he would have to be blind to miss seeing Aziraphale standing at the cashier's station, Aziraphale quickly looked back at the barista and told her what he wanted.

Heart pounding and hands damp with nervousness, he paid for his order and waited anxiously by the counter for his food and drink. He risked a glance back at the window and was beyond pleased to see that the red haired man was still there. He had turned back around, but he hadn’t run out of the door in a panic, so thank God for small miracles. 

Aziraphale was soon given his order and he took it with him to a small table against the wall near the window, not too close to where the red haired man was perched, but not too far away either. He sat down and, after settling himself, he blew on his tea to cool it and resolutely did not look in the mysterious man’s direction. He would play this off as casually as possible. Wait for the other man to make a move. 

He waited. And waited. And waited. He ate the pound cake, and drank the tea, and then he simply sat, looking around him at the other patrons in the coffee shop, who were either laughing and talking in twos and threes, or alone and on their laptops and phones, tapping away at something or other. 

As the minutes ticked by, he began casting quick glances in the man’s direction. The glances started to linger a bit longer each time, until he was blatantly staring at the man’s back from his position at a small table a few feet away. The man was very thin. Not emaciated, just thin in a gangly, lanky sort of way. His narrow shoulders were hunched up by his ears, and there was an air of constant tension about him. As if he were always thinking and worrying and teetering on the edge of some sort of spastic movement. 

It occurred briefly to Aziraphale that perhaps the man was a nutter. That he’d gone and developed a crush on an unhinged individual. He somehow doubted this. The man was very well put together, his clothing and hair immaculate, his snakeskin boots gleamed from being well polished, and Aziraphale spotted a posh silver bracelet around one wrist as the man reached up to run his fingers nervously through his hair. But it  _ was _ London after all. There were all sorts of people who lived here and were of questionable morals, or who had a tenuous grasp on sanity, no matter how nicely they dressed.

The man shifted in his seat and Aziraphale swiftly ripped his eyes away from where he’d been perusing the stranger’s back and looked down at his teacup. He heard the scrape of the man’s stool being pushed back and the rasp of material as he stood up. Aziraphale’s heart was pounding, and he kept his eyes trained on the wooden surface of his own small table, not daring to look up to see if the man had spotted him. He would be incredibly surprised if he  _ wasn’t _ spotted. People always noticed Aziraphale. He glowed. Or so he’d been told by too many people to count. 

_ Look at you! You’re glowin you are! _

_ You’re so bright and sunny! Just like an angel! _

_ You always seem to have a glow about ya _

He’d heard the sentiment expressed many times over the course of the past year. It did not help matters that his hair was bright white-yellow and stuck out all over his head. It never grew longer, nor did it become tangled, but also, it never became any more manageable than the wild halo that it perpetually arranged itself in on a daily basis. He’d tried using a comb, pomade, had even tried shaving it off, only to wake the next morning to find it had grown back exactly the same. He put this particular fact away in the file marked “Things About Me I Cannot Explain” and had gone on with his day. 

“Um, hello.”

He looked up directly into a pair of round, dark tinted sunglasses. The red haired man was standing by his table.


	6. Chapter 6

Crowley could hardly believe that the bookshop owner had followed him to the coffee shop. At least that’s what he’d thought at first, then, beyond reason, it seemed that the man had entered the shop by pure coincidence, which made no sense at all. 

The blond man had walked in, looking pensive and had gone over to the dessert case, looking at the pastries and biscuits displayed therein with the practiced and eager eyes of someone who loves sweet things. Crowley had taken the opportunity to swivel slightly on his stool and watch him. A beam of light lanced in from the street, striking the man’s wild, white-blond curls and setting them ablaze with a golden glow. The man, startled from his perusal of the dessert case by the sudden flash, moved to look up, and Crowley jerked back around in his seat and tried to appear like he had not just been staring at the stranger by the cashier's station. 

He dared not turn around again, but did sneak glances at the man by way of his reflection in the window as he purchased his tea and dessert and walked over to a table near where Crowley sat. For a heart stopping moment, Crowley thought the man meant to come over and say hello. They had after all just met one another fifteen minutes prior. Surely he recognized Crowley. There weren’t any other red haired men in black clothes in the coffee shop, and Crowley liked to think of himself as very memorable. He certainly got his fair share of lingering glances from interested passersby when he went out around town. But the man wasn’t coming to talk to him. Instead he sat down at his own table and proceeded to eat his dessert and drink his tea.

He did however look over at Crowley quite often. Crowley could see him staring in the reflection of the window, and that fact made him feel hot and flushed and very nervous, and also, happy in a way he hadn’t felt in months. This stunning, fascinating, strange man found him interesting. Interesting enough to stare at him repeatedly over the course of the past twenty minutes anyway. 

Crowley stayed seated and turned away toward the window as long as he could. What was he supposed to do now? He hadn’t dated anyone in the year since he’d woken up in hospital with his memories a shattered, numb mess inside his head. He wasn’t even sure “dating” was a thing he did. It certainly didn’t feel right. To make boring small talk with a stranger until he could take their clothes off, or not even that, until he could wrap himself around them and watch telly together. It did not feel like a thing he’d done before.

But he wanted to do that now. Wanted to with all his heart as he watched the white flame of the stranger’s hair bob gently as he looked around him and bent his head to sip at his tea, and turned his handsome, blurry face toward Crowley over and over again in the reflection of the glass. Why did he feel so drawn to this person when no one else had even sparked the slightest interest in him in a full year? 

He had to get up and go over to the man. He had to introduce himself. He’d never forgive himself if he didn’t. He knew it would be so much simpler and easier to get up and walk out, pretending he hadn’t seen the man, but he couldn’t bring himself to do that. Couldn’t stab himself in the back like that with the blade of his own anxiety and insecurity. Not again. 

Taking a deep, bolstering breath, he stood and turned. Feeling his heartbeat accelerate to a probably unhealthy speed, he stepped over to the man’s table and cleared his throat.

“Um, hello,” he said. Not Shakespeare, but it would have to do.

The man looked up at him, sea coloured eyes going wide and soft mouth falling open in mild surprise. “Oh,” he said, and Crowley was pleased to not be the only person in this exchange that was struck with a sudden lack of articulation. “Hello,” the man said. 

“Hey, um. I’m sorry I ran out of your shop,” Crowley continued, feeling a prickly heat crawling up his neck and into his face, feeling endlessly glad he’d taken to wearing his sunglasses at all times. “I’ve had a strange day and I just...I didn’t…” he ran out of words as the stranger’s face broke into a sunny smile that quite literally took his breath away.

“Oh! It’s no worry at all! I know how it feels to have an off day. Won’t you sit down? Join me for a tea or a coffee?” The man gestured expansively at the small chair opposite him, and Crowley nodded mutely and gratefully dropped himself into it like a puppet whose strings had been cut. 

“Thanks,” he mumbled, unsure of what to say next. 

“Which would you like? Tea or coffee? I can go fetch us some. My treat,” the man said, still smiling that ridiculous, sunshine smile, his eyes large and luminous and hopeful. 

“Oh, um, a coffee would be fine,” Crowley replied, wishing he could come up with a casually offhanded joke or something frightfully clever to say and failing totally. “Thanks,” he said. 

The stranger got up and hurried over to the counter, returning a short while later with two steaming takeaway cups. “I don’t know if you take cream or sugar, so you may need to fix yours up to your liking,” he said as he sat back down again.

“Black’s fine,” Crowley mumbled amiably. “I appreciate it. I’m not really a crazy person. I just had a strange day. A strange year actually,” he added with a shrug. 

“That sounds very familiar,” the man replied. “I’ve had a strange year as well. To strange years!” he lifted his cardboard cup in a toast and Crowley obligingly touched his cup to the man’s, feeling a grin sneaking its way across his face. 

“My name’s Crowley,” the man said. 

“What was that? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” the stranger said.

“Crowley,” repeated Crowley.

“How funny,” the man said, frowning slightly. “I cannot for the life of me understand what you just said. 

“C-R-O-W-L-E-Y” spelled Crowley, hoping that would help. Was the man touched? It wasn’t  _ that _ unusual a name. 

“Crowley?” repeated the man, and Crowley nodded gratefully. 

“Well, that was strange,” the man said. “I couldn’t hear you say it, but when you spelled it out, I could hear the individual letters. Huh. In any case, my name is **********.” 

“Your name is what now?” Crowley heard nothing but blank space when the man spoke his name. He could see the man’s lips move, but couldn’t hear any sound coming out. “I couldn’t hear you,” he said.

“I said, my name is **********” the man said. 

“Still can’t hear you,” Crowley said apologetically with a sheepish grin. “Perhaps if you could spell it?”

“A-Z-I-R-A-P-H-A-L-E,” the man spelled out his rather long name. Crowley frowned.

“Ah-zerp-ah-fail?” he hazarded. The man giggled. It was the most charming thing Crowley had ever heard. 

“Give me a moment,” the man said, and reached into the inside of his jacket, pulling out a very posh looking fountain pen. He uncapped the pen, picked up a napkin and wrote his name down on it, then pushed it across to Crowley. 

“Ah-zee-rah-fail?” Crowley tried again and was pleased to see the stranger, Aziraphale, nodding happily.

“Right oh! You’ve got it old chap!” he exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, trying the long, strangely biblical sounding name on for size. It was pretty in a way. He liked it. “I like it,” he said out loud, grinning, and was rewarded with a blush from his new friend. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, looking down at his hands in a way that brought to mind a shy maiden in a Jane Austin novel. Crowley felt his chest go all warm. 

“So what brought you here?” he asked. “Were you stalking me?” 

“Stalking you- no! No, of course not!” Aziraphale was delightfully flustered at Crowley’s attempt to tease him.  _ This could get addicting _ Crowley thought with an inward smile. “No, after you left the shop, I decided I’d close up and go for a walk. I felt suddenly as if I needed to do something new, so I ducked in here to have some tea and cake. I swear I had no idea you’d already be here.” 

“That’s quite a coincidence,” Crowley remarked, still unsure if he believed the man. And yet, Aziraphale had seemed genuinely flustered when Crowely had accused him of stalking. Stranger things had happened than two men accidentally meeting twice within the space of ten minutes, he was sure of it. 

“It is quite a coincidence,” agreed the man. “So,” he continued, absently fondling his tea cup, “what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a horticulturist,” Crowley replied, waiting for Aziraphale’s eyes to glaze over. 

“Oh my! How fascinating!” Aziraphale exclaimed, leaning forward in his chair, his eyes sparkling with interest. 

Crowley was momentarily struck speechless.

“I’ve always found plants to be so very interesting,” Aziraphale went on enthusiastically. “They’re so varied and so lovely and they each have their own little personalities, don’t they?”

“They do,” managed Crowley, feeling his ears go hot. “I um...I’ve always loved plants...apparently.”

“Apparently?” Aziraphale caught on very quickly to Crowley’s choice of words. “You’re not sure if you’ve always loved plants?” 

“Well,” Crowley began, “I um...this is going to sound really strange,” he warned, steeling himself for the sympathetic looks and the uncomprehending expressions that usually came after he told people about his situation, which he didn’t do all that often to be honest. 

“Try me,” Aziraphale replied, his face going very still and attentive, his eyes curious. 

“Well, you see, I was in a car accident a year ago, and I spent a week in a coma, and when I woke up, my memories were all gone. Not  _ all _ of them obviously. I remembered how to do normal, human things like speak and walk and I remember all the general stuff, like who’s prime minister and what an umbrella is and so forth, but I couldn’t remember anything about  _ my _ life in particular and…” He trailed off when he saw the expression on Aziraphale’s face. 

Aziraphale, already a rather pale person, had gone absolutely white, his face devoid of any of the blush that had graced his plump cheeks only moments before. His mouth had dropped open in shock and his eyes had gone as large and round as dinner plates. 

“Are you alright?” Crowley asked, genuinely concerned. “You seem a bit pale. I’m OK by the way. I don’t remember the accident. No serious physical damage or anything…”

“I fell off a ladder a year ago,” Aziraphale said, sounding faint and confused. “I was told I was in a coma for a week. I don’t remember anything either.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Crowely couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard. 

“I said,  _ I too _ lost my memories a year ago,” Aziraphale replied. 

“You’re taking the piss,” Crowley said, feeling his own jaw drop open in surprise. “You can’t be telling me that you  _ also _ suffer from trauma induced amnesia. What date was your accident?”

“I don’t recall the exact date to be honest,” Aziraphale replied sounding confused, as if he were just waking from a long nap. “It was..it must have been around this time of year though. October? Early November? It was getting chilly outside, and the hospital had a fall leaves motif.” His hands where they rested on the table had started to tremble a little. Crowley smothered a mad urge to reach out and grab them in his own. 

“That’s right around the time of my car accident,” he said wonderingly. “This can’t be a coincidence,” he added. “How could we both have almost the exact same, rare thing happen to us at around the same time, and then meet up, by chance? It’s  _ not  _ a coincidence. It just can’t be.” He was aware that he was babbling at this point. 

“Do you have any family?” Aziraphale asked suddenly. “Any brothers and sisters? Parents?” He paused then, and a little color worked its way back into his cheeks. “A partner?” 

“No,” Crowley said. “No, I’ve got no one. I was told my parents passed away a few years ago and I have no siblings and no...no urm...partner to speak of.”

“Neither do I,” Aziraphale replied, his brow furrowing above confused eyes. “What could it possibly mean?”

“Can we go somewhere a little more… private?” Crowley asked. He felt as if his world was unraveling, and suddenly the bright lights and the noise of the coffee shop seemed unbearable. “Just to talk,” he added, hoping Aziraphale wouldn’t get the wrong impression. But also, sort of wanting him to want to get the wrong impression at the same time.  _ Focus _ he chided himself.  _ Now is not the time to try and pick this man up. _

“Certainly! My shop, as you know, is right down the street. We could go there…” Aziraphale was recapping his pen and gathering his coat as he spoke and Crowley nodded and rose from the table. Together, they made their way out onto the street and back to Aziraphale’s shop. Aziraphale unlocked the door and ushered Crowley inside, asking him to wait in the foyer while he turned on the lights. 


	7. Chapter 7

Aziraphale rushed about, turning on lamps and flipping switches until the shop was lit by a golden glow. He didn’t turn on the overhead lights, as they would give passerby the impression that the shop was open, and he’d drawn the shades and put the Closed sign out front specifically to deter anyone from knocking. He was still in shock from hearing that his new friend had the exact same affliction as Aziraphale. How incredibly unbelievable?

A small part of his brain wondered if Crowley was lying. If he’d somehow found out about Aziraphale’s memory loss and hoped to take advantage of him by way of an elaborate, highly personalized grift. 

_You wouldn’t mind if he took advantage in some ways,_ his mind supplied unhelpfully. He banished such thoughts, both the suspicion and the racy imaginings, as he hurried back to the foyer. “If you come this way, I have a sitting room back here where we can talk,” he said to Crowley as the man sauntered over and followed him back toward his sitting room.. 

Aziraphale tutted to himself at the messy state of his small sitting area at the back of the shop. The sofa was covered with books and there were three or four tea cups sitting on various surfaces, making him look not at all neat or tidy. “I apologize for the mess,” he said, gathering up the tea cups hurriedly and taking them to the kitchen sink, before returning to move enough of the books on the sofa to the side so that Crowley had a place to sit. 

Crowley dropped onto the sofa with a soft huff and sat there, looking dazed in his sunglasses, his dark clad limbs spread out, as if taking up as much room as possible was wired into his DNA.

“I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but why do you always wear those shades?” Aziraphale asked, feeling presumptuous anyway but really wanting to see the man’s eyes. He was of the opinion that you hadn’t really met someone until you could see their entire face. 

“Oh, well, s’just a habit I suppose,” Crowley replied, reaching up a hand to grip his shades and pull them from his face. He turned to look at Aziraphale, blinking somewhat and Aziraphale felt his heart literally stop beating. 

“Your _eyes_ ,” he breathed, not even trying to hide the fact that he was utterly gobsmacked. 

“Yeah, I’ve been told they’re quite nice. A ‘golden brown’ someone once said...but I never saw how they were that special.”

“Crowley…” Aziraphale found himself getting up out of his chair and stepping closer in order to get a better look. “Your eyes...they’re not any sort of brown, golden or otherwise. They’re...well...how shall I put this,” he leaned in, peering at Crowley’s face, causing the other man to look at him suspiciously. “They’re...yellow.” he said wondrously. “Bright yellow.” 

Crowley’s eyebrows raised above his truly unusual eyes and a look of disbelief passed over his face. “What do you mean _yellow_ ?” he asked, sounding very confused. “They’re light brown. I mean, like I said, some people have described them as ‘golden’, but they’re not _yellow._ ”

“Yes! Yes they _are_ ! Crowley, would you please come over here, into the light?” Crowley obediently rose and stepped closer to the floor lamp between the sofa and Aziraphale’s armchair. “Thank you dear boy, now if you could look up into the light so that I can get a better look at them. _Oh my_ ,” Aziraphale breathed as he peered closely at Crowley’s extremely unusual yellow eyes. They were a bright, traffic light yellow. The yellow of daffodils or a child’s plastic rain slicker. And the pupils were narrow slits of black, running vertically down the middle of each eye. “Like a snake’s…” Aziraphale heard himself say. 

“What? You’ve got to be pulling my leg. I’ve seen my own eyes in the mirror a hundred times! And they are definitely _not yellow_. Pretty sure I’d notice if I had yellow eyes.”

“With black slits for pupils,” supplied Aziraphale.

“With _what??”_ Crowley looked at Aziraphale, his yellow eyes wide and his mouth hanging open in obvious disbelief. “You’re really taking the piss now! You can’t be serious. Yellow with black slits? What am I? Some sort of secret monster? Did I wake up in an episode of the X-Files?” 

“I don’t know what the _X-Files_ is, but you have yellow eyes with black slits for pupils Crowley. I can see them as clear as day. I’m confused as to why you _can’t_ see them, being that they’re _your_ eyes. Perhaps…” here he stopped and considered the situation. “Perhaps someone drugged my tea?”

“Who would do that?” Crowley demanded, still confused. “The teenage barista at the coffee shop?? Maybe she was in the organ thieving business and decided to snatch your kidney once you’d passed out in the loo?”

“No need to be cynical Crowley, I’m simply trying to piece together why your eyes would look so very unusual.”

“Yeah, sorry. I don’t mean to be a prat, it’s just...well… This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t,” agreed Aziraphale, watching as Crowley went back and tossed himself bonelessly onto the sofa. “Why would I see you differently than you see you? I am assuming no one else has remarked that you have reptile eyes before now have they?”

“Absolutely no one,” Crowley said. “People comment on them being a pretty shade of golden brown, an amber colour, but no one has told me I have _snake’s eyes_. Pretty sure I’d remember that.”

“Yes, well, both of us seem to have a lot of trouble with our memories in general,” Aziraphale remarked, chewing absently at his thumbnail as he turned the unusual chain of events over in his mind. Suddenly an upsetting thought occurred to him. “Do you see anything strange when you look at me? What color are my eyes?”

“A stormy sort of gray green,” remarked Crowley immediately, and Aziraphale felt himself go warm in the face. “There isn’t anything all that unusual about you, except that you sort of...glow.” Crowley continued. 

Aziraphale nodded. “So people have told me.” 

“Like you have a halo or something,” Crowley said, squinting yellowly at Aziraphale from the sofa. “Not _literally_ mind you, but sort of like, your hair and your face...they almost give off their own kind of light.”

“Your friends really haven’t said anything about your eyes?” Asked Aziraphale, trying again to make sense out of this strange sequence of events. 

“I don’t have any friends,” said Crowley, sounding crestfallen in a way that tugged at Aziraphale’s heart. 

“I don’t either,” Aziraphale responded gently. “I suppose I’ve felt too blue and out of sorts since the accident to make any new ones. Though there was this couple…”

“Wait!” Crowley had reached out a hand toward him and was staring wide eyed. “Were you visited by a mad American woman and a racy old lady with red hair, claiming to be your friends? Really soon after you left hospital?”

“No….” said Aziraphale, “but I _was_ visited by a charming young couple. The woman come to think of it, she had an American accent.”

“Did she have long dark hair? Was she ridiculously pretty?” Crowley was leaning toward him and waving his hands about urgently. 

“Yes! She was. She kept showing me a picture of someone on her mobile and saying someone’s name, over and over again. But I couldn’t hear it. Almost like how I couldn’t hear your name at first…” he trailed off as something began to dawn on him.

“I just got chills,” Crowley said. “Those people that came to see us...that called themselves our friends, perhaps they _were_ actually our friends.” 

“Impossible,” Aziraphale responded with a shake of his head. “At least, highly improbable. I saw on the news the very next day that they were thieves and liars. I very much doubt that I’d be hanging around with a pair of thieves.”

“You know, the same thing happened to me,” Crowley replied, a tone of suspicion creeping in around the edges of his voice. “I read in the papers that they were con artists. Now, I get the distinct feeling that hanging about with a pair of thieves might actually be something the me before the accident would have done. Don’t ask me why...I just sense things about myself sometimes. But I decided not to reach out to them. I didn’t need the stress at the time.” 

“I wonder if we could find them now,” Aziraphale mused. A sudden thought occurred to him. “What sort of things have you noticed about yourself from...before? You said you sensed some things…” He looked expectantly at Crowley.

“Well, lets see now,” Crowley ran his fingers through his copper hair, making it gleam gently in the yellow lamplight. “For one, I’m not a big fan of eating. And I love taking long naps.” 

“Huh, remarked Aziraphale. “I’m the exact opposite. I love eating and I don’t sleep.”

“What, at all?” Crowley asked, his yellow eyes darting to Aziraphale’s face. 

“Not at all,” Aziraphale confirmed. “I haven’t slept a wink in an entire year. Something tells me that isn’t normal. For a human being,” he added hastily.

“I don’t eat for days and don’t feel any hunger at all,” said Crowley, his eyebrows climbing to his hairline. “I have literally spent weeks at a stretch living on coffee and tea. I do sleep though. Love it. I’ll sometimes sleep a week away without realizing it.” 

“Isn’t that funny,” Aziraphale was perplexed. 

“Something very strange is going on,” Crowley replied, furrowing his brow. 

“Yes, indeed” Aziraphale nodded. For a moment, both men sat, lost in thought. 

“Can I have your mobile number?” Crowley asked, jolting Aziraphale out of the pensive silence. 

“Oh, erm...I don’t actually have a mobile phone,” he said, feeling foolish. It had never seemed important to have one until this absolute vision in tight denim had asked him for his number. “I do have a landline here at the shop though! I’ll give you that number.” 

“You don’t have a mobile?” Crowley looked more incredulous at learning this, than the fact that Aziraphale didn’t sleep. “Something tells me you’re a little old fashioned,” he remarked. That teasing tone he’d had when he accused Aziraphale of stalking him had returned, and Aziraphale was not sure why he liked it so much. 

“Well yes,” he replied. “I do seem to be old fashioned don’t I? It feels natural to be this way. Minimum of modern technology and all. I do have a computer in the back,” he offered hopefully. 

“Why do I get the distinct impression that it’s from the Pleistocene era?” Crowley drawled. 

“And you, Mr. Fancy Pants?” Aziraphale countered sassily. “Have you no interest in history?”

“Not really,” Crowley replied. “I like new things. And things that cause trouble.”

“Things that cause trouble?” Aziraphale wasn’t sure he understood.

“You know...like when someone opens their umbrella and it immediately goes inside out and they get soaked on their way to a job interview?” Crowley offered with a hint of glee. “That makes me happy for some strange reason. Or when someone drops their phone in the lake when trying to take a picture. Or when a kid gets a lolly stuck to his shirt. Stuff like that tickles me to no end, and I have no idea why.”

“That certainly doesn’t sound very...nice,” remarked Aziraphale with a sniff. 

“Well, apparently I can’t help it,” Crowley said, shrugging. “It’s all just who I am under the memory loss right? Why,” he paused, fixing Aziraphale with a wry look. “What sorts of things do _you_ like?”

“Oh, I like babies, and dogs, and cats. I like sunsets. I like fresh baked goods. I like when people are kind to each other. I’m hopelessly charmed when little girls wear tutus over their regular clothing. I adore seeing young couples in love. I just love the sound of birdsong in the morning..”

“OK, OK, I get the picture,” Crowley held out his hands as if begging for a reprieve. “You sound like a right angel. So full of...universal love for everything.”

“And you don’t love _anything_?” Aziraphale asked, feeling strangely hurt by Crowley’s playful criticism. 

“I guess… I don’t know,” Crowley looked acutely uncomfortable and Aziraphale decided he’d best change the subject. 

“In any case dear boy, here is my number,” he jotted down the shop’s landline number on a spare strip of paper he’d used as a bookmark and handed it to Crowley. “I think it prudent that we stay in touch, what with all of these very startling coincidences.”

Crowley, disappointingly had put his glasses back on, and reached for the paper with now unreadable eyes. “Ah. OK,” he said as he took the strip of paper and folded it into an inside pocket of his jacket. “Here’s mine.” He read his out loud for Aziraphale to copy down.

After that, it felt as if the evening had wound down. There was lots more that Aziraphale wanted to ask Crowley, but he felt the comment about not loving anything had put the other man off, and it was getting late. He bid Crowley adieu and closed the shop door behind him, before wandering upstairs to read for a while. He ended up sitting up in bed (a thing that was comfortable to do, even though he never slept) and staring blankly at the page of a book for nearly an hour before giving up and going back downstairs, where he paced uselessly for quite some time. 

He was restless and confused. Meeting Crowley had knocked his world sideways, had him doubting his reality and his history. How was it possible for two people to experience such unique and similar things? It defied the laws of statistics. And yet...his own experiences, his lack of sleeping, his inconsistent breathing and a heartbeat that sometimes stopped when he didn’t remember to start it up again… these were all things that felt natural to him and yet also things that defied all he knew of reality or medical science. 

It did not help matters that he found Crowley to be insanely attractive. Before meeting Crowley, he’d thought perhaps sex had not been a thing that interested him. He did not know how to describe it, but he had no memories of his body ever experiencing something of that nature. He was certain that if he’d lain naked with someone and experienced sexual ecstasy in their arms, he’d have _some_ idea of what that would feel like. But now, he knew that he hadn’t. There was a blank space in his mind where the memories of that specific action should have resided. He remembered the feel of eating, of walking, of speaking, of reading and writing. He could effortlessly make a good cup of tea without stopping to consider how to do it, but when he thought of the things he might like to do with Crowley, (things that made him feel hot and flushed all over) there was no feeling of ever having done them before. With anyone. 

Why he would want sex, but never have had it, at his age, in a busy and thriving (and sometimes very gay) place like Soho, London, was beyond him. He did not _feel_ like a prude. He’d discovered that masturbation felt very comfortable and familiar. The feeling of reaching orgasm was not a new thing. But there were no impressions in his mind of what it actually felt like to kiss someone or be kissed. What it felt like to taste the skin of another person or to feel a naked body close to his. How confusing. 

None of these mysteries could be solved now. He’d have to wait until daybreak, perhaps call Crowley up and ask if he wanted to get lunch somewhere? He was itching to talk to the enigmatic, astoundingly attractive man again, and soon. Secure in the knowledge that he’d be able to call Crowley up and reconnect on the morrow, he returned to his bedroom and settled back in to read until morning. And eventually, he could actually see the words written on the page, and pull his mind away from the snake eyed man with the ginger hair for long enough to read an entire chapter in only five hours. 


	8. Chapter 8

Crowley woke the next morning to the clattering buzz of his mobile on his glass topped bedside table. He reached out a fumbling hand and immediately knocked the mobile onto the floor. Then, cursing colorfully, he sat up in bed, bent and fished around desperately yet mostly blindly for it until he could grab it and hit the answer button. 

“Lo,” he mumbled.

“Crowley!” the voice of his agent, Beezie, who had never before sounded this awake and chipper, assaulted his ears. “Time to get up! I need to talk to you about an urgent matter.” 

“Ok, so, talk,” Crowley was groggy and confused and in no mood for a discussion about business right now. 

“Not on the phone. In person. It’s way too important a matter to discuss over the phone. Meet me at the shop on the corner in thirty minutes, and don’t take calls from  _ anyone else _ or talk to  _ anyone _ in the meantime!”

Crowley frowned at his mobile but said he would do as his agent asked. They hadn’t led him wrong yet. He rolled out of bed and went to take a quick shower. After getting dressed, he obediently headed out to meet Beezie. He hadn’t seen them in person often before now. A couple of times to fill out paperwork for a job, but that was the extent of their connection that was not digital. This urgency to meet up was unusual in the extreme, as previously, they’d made appointments well in advance, and had met up at nicer places than the hole in the wall at the end of the block. 

He walked down to the corner, to a small sandwich shop with a few sets of tables and chairs that were usually empty, and found his agent sitting at one such table. They were a small person. Small and surly looking, with a shock of wild, black hair and a pale face. They shot him a sharp look with their ice blue eyes as he sat down.

“Crowley,” they said, leaning forward in their chair and looking conspiratorial all of a sudden. “Have you met someone new recently?”

Crowley paused in lowering himself into his own chair before settling with a thump. His eyebrows crept up above his glasses. “Yes,” he responded, “how did you know?”

“Well,” said Beezie. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you today. Did this person happen to be a fat blond man in a ridiculous bowtie?”

“Um, yes, yes he was. I didn’t find his bowtie all that ridiculous really-”

“He’s a con artist,” said Beezie, leaning forward further and giving Crowley a very intent look. “He’s a con artist and you can’t trust him.” 

Crowley was surprised to say the least. Aziraphale didn’t seem like he could con a baby into handing him a toy block, but perhaps he was mistaken… “That doesn’t seem likely. And anyway, how did you know about him? How did you know I met him?” He was suspicious of the story his agent was telling him, and yet he also had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. It would stand to reason that his new friend was somehow too good to be true.

“I know about him because I have friends who know things and they know people who he’s taken advantage of, and that’s all you need to concern yourself with.” Beezie wasn’t making a lot of sense, and they looked very agitated. “I know because he’s conned a lot of people out of a lot of money and I don’t want you to be next!”

Crowley held his hands up protectively, as Beezie was starting to get a little intense. He’d never seen them this upset, and that was saying something wasn’t it? Still, Aziraphale had seemed so harmless. So sweet. Could he really be a thief? Was there something about Crowley that made thieves target him in particular? This made three, counting the women from a year ago. 

Damn it! He  _ really liked  _ Aziraphale. He couldn’t imagine that kind, accommodating man having a devious bone in his body. “You can’t be serious,” he said, risking an outburst from his agent. “He’s just a sweet bloke. He couldn’t be some sort of criminal…”

“I didn’t want to have to do this,” Beezie said, reaching into a black messenger bag that was slung over the back of their chair. “But I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me, so I got my friend, who’s connected to a certain governmental investigational agency to get me some photos.”

“Some photos?” Crowley was confused and alarmed. “Of what?”

Beezie took a manilla envelope out of the bag and spread several large, glossy, black and white photographs out on the table between them. In all of them, Aziraphale was seen chatting up men in a variety of locations.

“So...he likes blokes. This proves nothing,” Crowley said, suppressing a sudden and surprising flash of jealousy at seeing so many photos of his new acquaintance being chummy with a series of men. “It’s not illegal to talk to people in public.”

“Wait…” Beezie said. They pulled out more photos and lay those on top of the others. In these, Aziraphale could be seen pocketing a series of wallets that were not his (or at least _ different  _ wallets, and it was unlikely that he had so many different ones that he called his own). “These are just photos of his pick pocketing operation,” Beezie said, leaning further in toward Crowley and studying his face intently. “He has a whole long game, where he gains a person’s trust by pretending to be a friend, and then finds a way to rob them blind.”

“Oh,” Crowley was uncertain of what else he should say. He felt a horrible, numb feeling spreading in his belly and his face had gone hot with shame. There was his lovely new friend, pocketing a series of gullible men’s wallets.  _ Stealing _ from people. He could barely believe it! Yet...here was photographic proof. “This is...this is...not good,” he stammered, feeling awful. 

“You bet your arse it’s not good!” Beezie quickly gathered up the photos and shoved them back into their bag. “I’m glad I caught you before he gained your trust. You should stay away from him at  _ all costs _ . Do you understand me Crowley? You have quite a bit of money saved up. It would be a real shame if he managed to nick it out from under you.”

Crowley nodded. The numb feeling in his gut had traveled north and settled around his heart like a cold fog. He was uncertain he’d ever been this bitterly disappointed. “I have to go,” he mumbled, unable to look Beezie in the face. 

“OK, fine. I’m glad I got to you before he did. Let's touch base later this week about that wedding out near Surrey, alright?”

“Alright,” Crowley repeated, not really hearing what they’d just said. “Talk to you later.” 

He rose from his chair and walked out of the shop in a daze. How could he have been so gullible? How had Aziraphale seemed so very pure and good to him? Could it be that despite his memory loss, he had a thing for toxic people? Maybe there was a long history of very bad relationships hiding behind the veil that kept his memories hidden from him? He hoped not, but clearly, shady individuals found him quite irresistible. 

And yet...inside the deep funk he could feel descending on him as he walked home, he still struggled to believe that a man like Aziraphale could do such reprehensible things. He seemed so very sweet and kind. Crowley supposed that was the way of con artists though, wasn’t it? They were unbelievably charming. Masters of manipulation. They could tug at your heartstrings until your purse strings fell open and all your cash spilled directly into their pockets. Darn it all!

For a mad moment, he considered simply letting Aziraphale take all of his money. What was money anyway? He didn’t really need to eat, and he could earn it back again soon enough couldn’t he?. 

_ Oh no, _ he thought miserably.  _ Oh no, you’ve got it bad. You’re seriously considering letting this bloke steal from you, just to spend more time with him. Talk about unhealthy.  _ But even as he scolded himself, he knew that he really  _ did _ have it bad. He had a mad, irrational crush on the strange, whimsical, apparently completely dishonest bookshop owner from Soho. And now? Now he had to avoid the man. 

Beezie was right though. There was no escaping it. Crowley had amassed a lot of money from his high end horticulture gigs. He liked his spacious penthouse flat in Mayfair. He liked his wardrobe full of slinky black clothes. If he ended up homeless and penniless because he couldn’t avoid talking to one alarmingly attractive con artist, he’d be very disappointed with himself indeed. 

And what’s more, he couldn’t bring himself to spend time with someone who didn’t really like him back. He couldn’t bear to see Aziraphale’s smile and know it was all just part of a scam to rob him of his money...

Still, the loss of this potential friendship, the only one he’d managed to cobble into existence in the entire year since his accident, hit him very hard. He felt tears welling up in his eyes and spilling down his cheeks, some of them getting caught on the inner rims of his sunglasses in salty little crescent shaped pools, as he took the lift up to his flat. He couldn’t think of doing anything today other than crawling into bed, burrowing himself beneath the covers and letting sleep take him. Letting it block out his pain and disappointment. 

And that’s precisely what he did. Sleep didn’t come immediately though, and he may have lain there, leaking tears and hugging himself for quite a while before he dropped off. 


	9. Chapter 9

Aziraphale received a knock on the door at 7am the next morning. It was too early for customers, and so he went cautiously to peek out of the shade covering the window of the front door of the shop. His financial advisor, Gabriel stood on the doorstep, looking perfectly quaffed and elegantly dressed as usual. Aziraphale could not help a frown of disappointment from forming. He liked Gabriel well enough. The man was helpful and pleasant, but there was a smugness about him, and a judgmental air that Aziraphale didn’t care for. Gabriel had a way of making Aziraphale feel as if he didn’t matter in the subtlest of ways. But he was, as has been mentioned, very helpful to Aziraphale from a business perspective, and so it seemed unnecessary and small minded to sack him for his subtle attitude of superiority. 

His appearance however was made somewhat more disappointing because he was not a slender, red haired man with yellow eyes. Aziraphale sighed and unlocked the door. 

“Gabriel. Good morning. Do come in,” he said, putting on his best welcoming expression, even if it was undercut slightly by the shadow of his irritability and disappointment at seeing the man on his front step. 

“Morning Aziraphale,” Gabriel strode into the shop, and as soon as Aziraphale had shut the door behind him, he turned and grabbed Aziraphale by the shoulders. “Have you met someone new lately?” he asked, looking intently at Aziraphale with his unsettlingly purple eyes. 

“Why...yes. I have,” Aziraphale stammered, flinching back away from his financial advisor’s glare. “How would you know that?” he asked.

“Never mind how I know about it,” Gabriel said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “The important thing is that this person you seem to be so chummy with all of a sudden, well, they can’t be trusted.”

Aziraphale blinked. “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” he asked. 

“I  _ mean _ he’s a total scheister. A con artist. A liar and a thief and he’s after your money!” Gabriel was shaking Aziraphale gently by the shoulders as he spoke, as if to drive his point home. 

“Gabriel, how...you can’t be serious! He seems perfectly nice. We met in the shop and went for a coffee. You can’t be implying that he’s some sort of ….crook…” He realized, with a sudden stab of intuition, that he did not at all wish to tell Gabriel about Crowley’s eyes, or their revelations about their memories, and snapped his mouth shut to prevent himself from spilling the beans. There was just something about Gabriel that made Aziraphale think he wouldn’t understand. 

“I  _ can _ imply that he’s a crook, because he  _ is  _ one!” Gabriel was shouting a bit now. “Don’t be naive Aziraphale. This guy has been roaming the book circuit, taking advantage of impressionable book dealers. Gaining their trust and then emptying their bank accounts. He’s a skinny guy right? Black clothes? Red hair? He probably acted interested in you and was really nice or something yes?”

Aziraphale nodded numbly. He needed time to think over what Gabriel was saying and why. “How is it that you know this person?” He asked. It seemed a reasonable question.

“I’m a financial advisor to some of the biggest and most affluent booksellers in the world Aziraphale! This guy’s got a reputation. Believe me. He’s trouble, and you don’t want any part of it.”

Aziraphale stepped back, away from Gabriel, nodding in a placating manner. He wanted Gabriel out of his shop, didn’t want to look at the man’s smug, handsome, square jawed face for one more second. Something wasn’t right, and Aziraphale needed time and privacy to find out what it was. Having Gabriel there, yelling into his face that he couldn’t trust Crowley wasn’t helping him think. 

“Oh my Gabriel, well, thank you so much for the tip!” he said, dredging up every ounce of false gratitude he could muster. Lying did not come easily to him, but, if he worked at it very hard, he could tell a certain sort of small, social white lie to get people to leave the shop. He’d grown rather adept at giving off the impression of being too busy to talk, or pretending to have a headache. “I will absolutely avoid this shady character in the future! Whatever would I have done without your sage advice and timely warnings?” as he spoke, he shepherded Gabriel toward the door and out of it. Gabriel kept trying to pipe up again, but he didn’t let the man get more than a fragment of a word out as Aziraphale shoved him from the shop and shut the door in his face. 

He leaned back against the door and breathed deeply, hearing Gabriel’s footsteps recede down the pavement outside, willing his pounding heart to slow and trying to organize his thoughts. 

Something was off. For some reason, he didn’t quite believe Gabriel. He wasn’t sure what motive Gabriel would have to lie about something like this, but it didn’t sound right at all. 

Firstly, he decided he would do some digging. He hauled his ancient and extremely heavy old metal rolodex out from under the register counter and leafed through it. He hadn’t kept in touch with other big shots in the book business much in the year since he’d woken up in hospital. Firstly, he had no memory of these people, and was unsure what relationship they’d had before his accident. He pictured a group of stuffy older gentlemen with leather patches on the elbows of their jackets, who smoked pipes. He himself was something of a stuffy older gentleman it seemed, and perhaps he’d had something in common with some of them outside of an obsessive love of books? Or perhaps just the love of books was enough to establish a good rapport?

He leafed through the rolodex and started writing down numbers. 

Four unexpectedly pleasant phone calls later, during which he had gotten lost a bit in the weeds discussing rare first editions with a series of elderly gentlemen who did indeed sound as if they had leather patches on the elbows of their jackets, and his suspicions were partly confirmed. No one had heard of Crowley. No one had heard of a dastardly book thief. Especially a flame haired one in tight jeans. Two of the gentlemen had thought at first that Aziraphale was describing a woman, and had perked up considerably, asking if perhaps he was aware of this thief’s plans to come their way. 

Aziraphale decided next to go straight to the source and call Crowley. He picked up and dialed Crowley’s number by heart, having memorized it already. He often had a good memory for things he found important or interesting, and he found Crowley very interesting indeed. 

The telephone rang and rang. Eventually, Crowley’s voicemail picked up. “Hey, this is Crowley. You know what to do. Do it with style.” Aziraphale cringed a little at the false bravado and distinct element of  _ trying too hard _ inherent in the outgoing message before speaking. 

“Hello Crowley! It’s Aziraphale. The bookshop owner you met yesterday. I...I was wondering if you would be able to meet up today for a talk. I’ve had a very strange visit from my financial advisor and I want to discuss something with you. Well..alright. Call me back when you get the chance.” He left his number in the voicemail just in case. 

Aziraphale hung up feeling a little disappointed. He wasn’t sure why. Was he expecting Crowley to jump to answer his call? Maybe not, but he  _ had _ picked up on some definite chemistry between them the day before.

He looked at the clock on the wall and realized that it was only half past nine in the morning. Of course. Crowley did not look like the type to rise at the crack of dawn. He looked very distinctly like a night person. Perhaps if he didn’t hear back from Crowley by four or five o’clock that afternoon, he would call him back, try again. Perhaps he was busy and hadn’t had a chance to look at his mobile?   
  


He ended up calling Crowley back at 2:30. Then again at 8pm. Both times, it went to voicemail. The final time he called, at 8, he’d left a second voicemail, politely asking for a call back and gently reminding Crowley that it was a matter of some urgency. 

A week went by and Crowley never returned his call. 


	10. Chapter 10

Crowley woke late the next day to three missed calls from Aziraphale. His heart leapt in his chest, and then sank into his shoes as he remembered that Aziraphale apparently couldn’t be trusted. There was a voicemail indicator, showing that the bookshop owner had left him answerphone messages, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen. Beezie had said Aziraphale was a con artist. What good would it do Crowley to hear his sweet voice, telling Crowley nice things? It would only make Crowley feel worse about cutting the man off. 

And cut him off he must. Beezie had made that very clear. He was not to trust Aziraphale, nor was he to speak to Aziraphale. And he was definitely  _ not _ supposed to wrap his arms around Aziraphale and bury his nose in the man’s neck. 

He hauled himself out of bed and went to go make himself some coffee. The ache in his chest was back. He shouldn’t have been surprised. He felt the numb feeling of loss and uselessness wash over him again as he fished around in the cupboards, looking for a bag of coffee beans he had been certain were there only yesterday. Alas, his questing hand found nothing in the empty darkness behind the cupboard doors. Sighing he resolved himself to drinking some water and checking his emails. Grabbing his mobile, he sprawled across his large, black leather sofa in his sitting room and scrolled through emails. Two from Beezie about this wedding that needed a special bower constructed of a creeping vine that was a rare plant to the northern hemisphere. Crowley huffed sardonically. Why did people get so very precious about their weddings? Love didn’t last. It never did. 

Aside from Beezie’s emails, there was only spam and adverts in his inbox, so he shut his email and, against his better judgment, clicked on voice messages. 

**_Hello Crowley! It’s Aziraphale. The bookshop owner you met yesterday. I...I was wondering if you would be able to meet up today for a talk. I’ve had a very strange visit from my financial analyst and I want to discuss something with you. Well..alright. Call me back when you get the chance._ **

Crowely gritted his teeth to control the urge to call Aziraphale back immediately. What good could that possibly do? It had been made pretty clear to him that he’d lived a life before his accident filled with fast cars and too much booze and that shady characters were drawn to him. Add to that his strange propensity for being attracted to mischief, and an unpleasant picture began to unfold. Crowley had not been a  _ good person _ . He hadn’t done  _ good things _ and other not-good people had been pulled into his orbit by the sheer force of his wickedness. He knew this should bother him more. It did nag a bit at his conscience, but what was possibly even more concerning, is that he didn’t feel a whole lot of guilt about this fact. 

His main feelings of regret were that Aziraphale had been one of those shady people, and that a continued friendship with the delightful, flaxen haired man wasn’t possible without risking losing his hard earned income and possibly his sense of self worth. He just couldn’t bear it if Beezie’s stories were true, and Aziraphale was only after him for his money. It would crush what little self esteem he had left. 

Two more messages followed:

**_Hello again Crowley! I thought perhaps you hadn’t seen my first message, and so I thought why not try calling again? I mean, these new mobile phones are so finicky...who knows...perhaps you never even got my first message? In any case, would you perhaps wish to go get a coffee or a tea somewhere and have a chat? Nothing too involved. I just thought the coincidences had piled up a bit high for our meeting to be simple chance...and...well… I enjoyed talking to you! Ring me back when you have a moment. My number again is…”_ **

Was this the voice of a man who really liked someone and was making extra special sure their message was received? Or was it the voice of a man who was getting nervous because his con was not going the way he’d planned? It was impossible to tell. The best con artists and grifters sounded the most genuine didn’t they?

The third message was tough to listen to:

**_Crowley, it’s me again, Aziraphale. If you haven’t called me back at this point, I am hoping it is not because you’ve had second thoughts about meeting me again. I don’t mean to be pushy. I do tend to be a bit exuberant about the things I like and very friendly with new people I meet. And I….well...I_ ** **do** **_like you Crowley. After we parted ways at the coffee shop, I did wish for us to meet again soon. I hope I didn’t crowd you. Perhaps you’ve simply not seen my messages? Or you’ve had a frightfully busy day? If that is the case, then by George! I certainly will feel like a fool for leaving this message! Well...erm… that’s all for now. I shan’t call again. If you wish to speak to me, you know where to find me. I hope you have a lovely day. Ta Ta for now.”_ **

His voice had grown softer and sadder as the message progressed, and Crowley could almost hear the other man’s heart breaking through his mobile’s speakers. But...wasn’t this the way of people who stole for a living? Playing on a person’s heartstrings to get them to offer help or money or to gain influence? How in the world was Crowley expected to discern real, human emotion from a cleverly constructed act? 

He thought again of the pictures Beezie had showed him. Beezie was a well established person in the field of event planning and horticulture. They’d been dealing with high end, wealthy clients and artists for decades probably. What cause would they have to lie? And besides, he’d known them for a year now, and they’d helped him  _ make _ money. A lot of it. They’d never even discussed a salary for themself, which come to think of it, was unusual. Crowley had always assumed that they’d been paid on some automatic debit system from his bank account. He hadn’t had the wherewithal to ask, and now could not remember how he and Beezie had worked out finances. Either way though, they were not a prime candidate to manipulate and steal from Crowley. Whereas they’d shown him hard evidence of Aziraphale, doing that very thing to a series of people in front of Crowley’s very eyes. 

Crowley paused for a moment before deleting the messages. But delete them he did. He knew that if he kept them, he’d only listen to them over and over again, until Aziraphale’s kind, melodious, sad voice had him calling the man back and volunteering to be the world’s most foolish mark. 

He had to do something today to keep himself entertained. He couldn’t simply sit around his apartment and mope, letting the empty feeling inside his chest expand to consume him. He decided to go for a walk to pick up some new coffee, and some tea, and perhaps a french press. He deserved better than to look through empty cabinets every morning, looking for something to drink. He deserved fresh made coffee, in the privacy and convenience of his own home, gosh darn it! 

He deserved some  _ real _ friends. Friends who were not at the center of a pick-pocketing operation. 

Crowley grabbed his black jacket with the red collar and sauntered his way to the lift down to the street. It was a sunny day, mild and cloudless, and he tried his best to feel positive about a new start in life, but instead, he couldn’t feel anything other than the empty space inside him that had, very briefly been filled with a warm glow. 


	11. Chapter 11

“Do you think he believed you?”

“The angel? Oh most definitely. I didn’t even have to whip out the big guns,” and by ‘big guns’ Gabriel meant the doctored photos of Crowley, shoplifting rare first editions that they’d created in order to convince Aziraphale that he was a crook. “Angels are far more gullible than demons. The poor sap just accepted my story. Bought it, hook, line and sinker.” 

“Good,” replied Beelzebub, their mouth pressed into a firm line, shoulders hunched where they sat opposite Gabriel in the diner booth. “Glad it went off without a hitch. Crowley seemed uncertain until he saw the photographs. But one good look at them made him give up the idea of Aziraphale as a potential new friend. I’m certain of it. That demon’s always had horrible self esteem issues. It happens when you get tossed out of heaven.”

Gabriel nodded. He didn’t know what it felt like to fall from heaven, but he’d heard cautionary tales that would make your skin crawl. “Good. That’s settled then.” 

“Yeah, Beelzebub said, “but what if it _isn’t_ settled? What if they meet up again? We can’t watch them _all the time._ Not inside their homes. Not inside buildings. We’d have to get up there and wander around after them like private detectives for that to work, and I don’t relish the thought of traipsing about London, spying on a pair of idiots in my off time. I have far too much work to do Downstairs.” 

Gabriel frowned. “It is a shame we had to pass the Earth Privacy Act of 515AD. My boss can be irritatingly respectful of Her agents’ private lives. I for one miss the days when you could just peer into people’s houses. Made it far easier to keep up on what they were doing. But, I suppose I really don’t relish the thought of catching one of them...you know...doing something icky with their private bits. Or...God forbid, picking their nose.” He shuddered. 

Beelzebub shuddered in sympathy. “I tried to talk Mr. L out of going along with it, but you know interdepartmental competition, if you lot pass new laws, we have to pretend like it was our idea all along. That or we risk looking out of touch.”

Gabriel was surprised to hear Beelzebub offering this rare example of transparent vulnerability. He carefully didn’t draw attention to it, in case they had second thoughts and never opened up again. 

“If it happens again…” he said, “I mean, if they meet up again, well, we can just wipe their memories a second time, can’t we? And maybe this time, we can put Crowley on a plane to the U.S, or Canada? Separate them. Tell him he has a great new gig for some wealthy guy out in the sticks, upkeeping his greenhouse or something. Maybe we should have done that in the first place…” 

“No, it would have been far too obvious,” Beelzebub replied as they ripped their napkin into a small pile of tiny pieces. “Neither of them have left London for any considerable amount of time since what...the middle of the 16th century? They clearly love the place, and my boss would notice if Crowley just up and took off for a new continent without checking in first. I’d be held accountable for knowing all about it.” They paused, thinking for a moment. “Still, I agree. We could wipe their memories a second time… perhaps, implant new ones. Revert back to that original plan of ours? Making them hate each other? That’s something I’d really like to see!” Their cold blue eyes glinted for a moment and they rubbed their hands together in an almost comical parody of a classic silver screen villain. 

“I like the way you think,” Gabriel said, smiling. 


	12. Chapter 12

Aziraphale frowned at his computer. It was an older model sure, probably ten years old by now, which, in computer years made it practically an octogenarian, but it could still “surf the webs” as he’d heard people say. Perhaps he could use it to find the mad American woman and her skinny boyfriend. He had nowhere to start though. He didn’t have their names for one. It was very difficult to find someone if you didn’t have their name. He couldn’t very well type “ _ pretty, dark haired american woman _ ” into the search bar of his web browser and be given a specific list of women in and around London who fit that description. Well, this was not technically true, but he was certain that quite a few naked pictures would be included, and that the data wouldn’t be all that relevant to his needs.

Perhaps the woman was a local? If she  _ were _ a local, where would she and her boyfriend spend their time? If he could find the restaurants or markets they frequented, he could engineer it so that he ran into them some day. Unfortunately, he knew nothing about their personal routines.

Then suddenly, inspiration struck. He could put out an advert couldn’t he? Like a dating profile, or a newspaper advert, but in order to find a stranger in a crowd instead of a date or a new employee. He pondered how best to do this, and after some searching, he decided to open accounts on every social media platform he could find and put a picture of himself and a simple message as the only content on each profile. The message said:

**_Hello. Do you know me? Are you an American woman with dark hair and a tall, thin gentleman friend? Do you have something important to show me? Please send me a message. PLEASE SHARE._ **

He made the posts public so that anyone could share them. All of this took quite a lot of research to accomplish, as he had only the vaguest idea of which social media sites were popular or how they operated. He also only had an ancient digital camera that hooked up to the computer with a fiddly little wire in order to upload photographs. He’d learned how to use it out of necessity in order to share photos of first editions in emails to his bookselling friends. Using it was always a lengthy and frustrating process. 

He eventually took a passably good picture of himself and got it uploaded (along with the accompanying message) onto several sites. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Tumbr. 

To say that he got a lot of responses would have been a gross understatement. The photos were shared almost instantly, hundreds of times, and his inboxes on those sites quickly filled up. Aziraphale knew he was pleasant to look at and that people liked and trusted him. It was almost as if he exuded some special pheromone that made people want to be near him, but this was  _ ridiculous _ . 

Hundreds of messages poured in on all four sites, and many of them were of a very salacious nature indeed. He knew what a “threesome” was...he had that memory somewhere in his brain from his life before the accident, (just as he knew he’d never experienced such a thing), but he did not realize how very many people wanted him to be a third participant in  _ their _ threesomes. Many many dark haired women with slender boyfriends thought that this was exactly what he wanted, and sent him a selection of pictures of their bodies, and their boyfriend’s bodies, with very little clothing on (or no clothing at all). 

He also received a lot of random rubbish, such as adverts, “friend requests” from total strangers, and people yelling at him about politics with the use of many exclamation marks. It was difficult to sift through the profusion. And time consuming as well. It took him a solid week to look through all of the messages, and still, he did not see any that looked to be from people who actually knew him (as opposed to those who wanted to  _ know him _ in a carnal manner). 

He was about to give up when he finally saw a message on Facebook. It was from a woman whose name was long and complicated looking, and he could not for the life of him piece it together. Her profile picture was of her face, half covered by a teacup as she took a sip, but the eyes that peered into the camera over the rim of said cup were very pretty indeed. 

The message was:  **_“Aziraphale! It’s me! ********! Me and ****! We’ll be over as soon as we can! Stay put!”_ **

He hadn’t included his name in any of the posts, just used the handle “Bookseller Seeking Friends,” and so this  _ must _ be the woman. And sure enough, before three hours had passed, there came a knock on the door of the shop. 

Aziraphale rushed to open it and there they were. The pretty American woman and her tall, gangly gentleman friend. He ushered them inside quickly. “Hello! Hello!” he exclaimed, shutting and locking the door behind them and flipping the closed sign out. Luckily no one was in the shop when they arrived, but if anyone had been, he’d have bodily removed them. “I’m ever so glad that you found me! I am almost certain that I am supposed to know you, but I’m afraid that I don’t.”

“Aziraphale!” The woman exclaimed and clasped him warmly by the forearms in a way that felt natural, as if she had done it many times before. “Yes! Like I told you last time, we’re your  _ friends _ . From ********! We’re ******** and ****!” We met on the ******** *******! Don’t you remember? It was….well it was very very memorable!” 

“Yes,” this from the young man. “You’ve been to our cottage for dinner many times. You and Crowley.” 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale felt his mouth drop open. “You know Crowley?”

“We do!” exclaimed Anathema. “He’s your best friend!” She continued, shaking him gently by the arms and peering into his face with intent, dark eyes. “He’s...well...he’s like the yin to your yang. You two were inseparable. What in the world has happened to you both?!” 

Aziraphale was dumb struck. “My… best friend?” he asked, feeling more and more confused. “So I’ve known him for a long time have I?”

“I think you’d better sit down before we discuss this any further,” said the gangly lad, stepping up beside his girlfriend and placing a warm hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “There is a whole lot we need to tell you.” 

______________________________________________

Two hours and seven cups of tea later, Aziraphale sat in his overstuffed armchair in the sitting room at the back of his flat, completely confused and awe struck. 

“So...I’ve known Crowley for….for  _ six thousand  _ years?” he asked, the enormity of that amount of time sounding far less impressive and impossible than it should have, which was in itself...strange. “And he’s a...a  _ demon _ ? And I’m…. an  _ angel _ ?” He looked down wonderingly at his plump hands and thick legs in their cream coloured trousers, as if he might see something about his body that was particularly angelic. “Aren’t angels supposed to have wings?” he asked numbly, looking up at the two young people sitting on the sofa, who were staring at him anxiously, but in an encouraging fashion. Like well meaning math teachers who wanted their student to finally grasp the concepts inherent to simple addition and subtraction. 

“You  _ do _ have wings” said Newt. Aziraphale had had them spell their names out right away, and now knew them to be ‘Anathema’ and ‘Newt.’ “I don’t know why you can’t bring them out, because we honestly never understood that in the first place. I’ve only seen them on a couple of occasions. But they were...well they were very impressive.” 

“I have wings…” Aziraphale trailed off as he reached behind himself to pat his back, as if he could find the dormant angel wings by touch, over his clothing. He felt nothing but the smooth plane of his upper shoulders, beneath three layers of cloth. 

“Yes. You have wings. You’re an angel. Crowley is a demon… and somehow… the two of you have been friends for a very very long time, and you worked to stop the apocalypse and save the world,” said Anathema, as if she were describing the plot of some well known television show, and not the most insane thing Aziraphale had ever heard. “Your bosses, the ones who didn’t want you to be friends...well, you apparently had to hide your relationship from them the entire time.”

“For some reason, the word ‘apocalypse’  _ does _ sound rather familiar,” admitted Aziraphale, head still reeling from all he’d learned from the young couple. “All of this should come across as ridiculous, but...it doesn’t. Perhaps I have a history of knowing and believing ridiculous things?” He frowned, thinking for a moment. “And Crowley and I...we were the best of friends you say?” he asked. 

“I don’t really know the particulars,” Anathema replied. “To me you always seemed like some sort of asexual married couple. Or one of those older couples who stopped having sex like a decade ago and just bicker companionably every chance they can get, but you can tell that they really like each other.”

“So we don’t...have sex?” Aziraphale asked, trying to mask the note of disappointment in his tone. 

“We don’t think you did, no,” this from Newt. “But honestly, I thought it rude to ask. You just both had this sort of comfortable companionship about you that was kind of...polite? Like you were very careful of each other’s boundaries, for all that you do like to make fun of each other, it just wasn’t the vibe of people who, you know, have been in bed together. But it  _ was _ the vibe of an old married couple... “ he paused then, frowning. “I suppose that if you did know one another for six thousand years, that would make sense…” 

“If I’m an angel,” Aziraphale said hesitantly, “then wouldn’t I have some sort of special powers? Like smiting? Or blessing or something?” The concept, while surprising, was not as shocking as some of the things he could have been in his life before he lost his memories. If someone had told him he’d been a politician, or say, a lawyer, that would have been beyond belief. But an omnipotent messenger of God? This for some reason did not seem as ludicrous as one might think. 

“You don’t have your powers?” Anathema asked, looking surprised. 

“Apparently not,” Aziraphale replied with a frown. “I mean, I didn’t even know I was an angel…”

“Have you tried snapping your fingers?” Newt supplied. “That was always how you used to do it. If you wanted something to happen, you just snapped your fingers, and it happened. It was brilliant!”

“The snapping!” Aziraphale stared at Newt, his eyes wide. “I had no idea why I kept snapping all the time! That must be it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work anymore.” He demonstrated by wishing for a fresh cup of tea and snapping his fingers. Nothing happened. 

“Oh, well that’s a let down,” Anathema said. She and Newt looked disappointed. “Something must have happened to make you lose your powers  _ and  _ your memories. What could do such a thing?”

“Where’s Crowley now?” Newt asked suddenly. 

“Oh! I suppose he’s at his home, wherever that is,” replied Aziraphale with a frown. “He seems to have drifted away from me. We met up by accident last week and he apparently has no memories either.”

“I’m aware of this,” Anathema said glumly. “Madam Tracy and I tried to talk to him, but he just looked confused and told us he had to go and walked away.”

“You know, now that you mention it…” Aziraphale said, his brain slowly putting the pieces of recent events together, “after I met the two of you earlier this year, there were newscasts all over the telly the next day about how you were a pair of book thieves. Are you?” he asked hesitantly, “book thieves that is? It’s why I never reached back out.” 

“Book thieves??” Anathema seemed genuinely shocked. “No, not at all. I run a new age shop in Tadfield and Newt sells computer accessories through his own online company. We’ve never stolen a thing in our lives!”

“Well,” said Newt, looking sheepish, “when I was seven, I did nick a sweet from the local shop… but that was a very long time ago.” Anathema gave him a look of one part irritation and three parts deep affection.

“You two are very much in love aren’t you?” Aziraphale asked. His new friends turned rather pink and Newt leaned over to kiss Anathema on the cheek. 

“Yes, we are,” Anathema said, flashing a gorgeous smile in Aziraphale’s direction as she squeezed Newt’s hand. “And no, we are most definitely  _ not _ book thieves. That’s ludicrous. You must have seen doctored footage of some sort.”

“It was on BBC News,” muttered Aziraphale, suddenly very confused. He did trust the young couple though, newscasts be damned. He somehow knew they had his best interests in mind. 

“Something very suspicious is going on here,” remarked Newt. “I think we should go talk to Crowley.”

“Yes!” Piped up Aziraphale, feeling a joyous bloom of warmth behind his breastbone at the mention of Crowley’s name. “We most definitely should! I called him three times since we met, and he hasn’t responded once.” He felt the joyous feeling fade a little when he remembered that Crowley had not answered his calls. 

“It’s his memory loss,” said Anathema. “From what I know of him, he’s a bit grumpy sometimes, but under normal circumstances he would do literally anything to make you happy.” 

“He would?” Aziraphale felt the warmth returning ten fold. 

“Oh yeah. I’m fairly certain he’s smitten with you,” Anathema threw this opinion out casually, far too casually for the fierce flash of hope and longing it caused to explode to life inside Aziraphale’s chest. 

“Sm-smitten?” he stammered. “With _ me _ ?”

“Well, like I said, I don’t think you guys have been...um… physically intimate or anything, but he looks at you like you hung the moon. When he takes off those blasted shades anyway.” 

“Oh! His shades!” Aziraphale put his warm, fuzzy feelings aside for a moment. “Are his eyes...um…”

“Yellow with black slits for pupils?” said Newt grinning. “Yup! They sure are.” 

“He can’t see them,” Aziraphale said wonderingly. “He insists that they’re a golden brown. I’m ever so glad I’m not imagining their color.” 

“No, you’re not imagining it. He has snake’s eyes. Apparently, he used to  _ be _ a snake? That’s what he tells us. Says he still turns into one during times of extreme stress,” Newt said. “I’ve never seen it, but I bet it’s brilliant.” 

“A snake…” Aziraphale tried to picture Crowley in the form of a snake and failed. There was a frustrating blank space in his mind when he tried to think of anything that might have happened longer than a year ago. Though there was definitely a serpentine sort of vibe he exuded. 

“He lives in a flat over in Mayfair,” Newt said. “We can walk over in ten minutes.”

“Alright,” Aziraphale said, trying to smother the feeling of anxiety that twisted in his stomach upon the thought of seeing Crowley again. What if his friend hated him? What if he’d been shown some similar negative things, like the newscasts that had tried to turn him against Anathema and Newt. Then he remembered something he hadn’t told them. 

“My financial advisor!” he exclaimed. 

“Your financial advisor?” repeated Newt, looking confused. 

“Yes, Mr. Archer. He came here the day after I met Crowley and told me Crowley was a book thief as well. That he spent his time getting cozy with dealers in rare first editions for the purposes of robbing them!”

“Someone with a very limited imagination is trying to manipulate you,” said Newt.

“It would seem that way. What if...what if Crowley got a similar message...maybe Mr. Archer found him and told him a similar story about me? Oh! I couldn’t bear it if he thought I was a crook!” Aziraphale had started gripping the arms of his chair in distress. 

“What does your financial advisor look like?” asked Anathema

“Oh, Mr. Archer? Well, he’s tall, and handsome, in a square jawed type of way. Dresses really impeccably-” 

“Gabriel!” yelled Anathema and Newt at the same time. 

“Yes,” agreed Aziraphale, confused at their reaction. “Gabriel Archer...do the two of you know him?”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw - some flippant language regarding alcoholism.

Crowley heard the buzzer for the front door of his building go off and jumped. He’d just woken up from an extended nap after a trip to the shops that had yielded a new French press and a bag of coffee. He’d been feeling accomplished and had rewarded himself with a much needed few hours of unconscious oblivion. 

Who could possibly be buzzing up at this hour? What time was it anyway? He looked at his mobile and saw that it was just after five o’clock. He walked over to the buzzer on the wall and pressed the intercom button. “Hello?” he asked groggily. 

“Crowely! It’s Aziraphale! Let me up please!” 

Crowley flinched at the sound of Aziraphale’s voice, tinny and distant as it crackled through the intercom speakers. He thought for a brief moment about not responding, letting Aziraphale just walk away, even though it was killing him inside to ignore the man’s blatant request to be allowed entry to Crowley’s flat, but then another voice chimed in. 

“Crowley! It’s ********! Let us up right now! We have a lot we need to talk about!” It was a young, American accented, female voice, whose name sounded like a blur of sound to Crowley’s ears. The mad American con artist woman! Had they teamed up? Either way, at this point, Crowley was curious enough that losing all of his money when they nicked his credit card or stole his valuables was a small price to pay to find out just what the Hell was going on.

He pressed the button to buzz open the lobby door. 

A few moments later, he heard the lift ding out in the hall and opened his front door. Three people exited the lift and walked toward him. One was of course Aziraphale, looking far too beautiful for his own good. The other two were the American woman and an awkwardly handsome young man of about the same age. “Hello!” Aziraphale piped up and waved, as he approached, and Crowley knew in that moment that there was no way this man was a crook. It wasn’t possible. His smile, as bright and sunny as always, was far too innocent and kind to have any ill intent behind it. If he  _ were _ a con artist, then Crowley would happily let himself be conned. 

He stepped back and held the door open so that the three people could file into his flat. Aziraphale gave him a shy, lovely look as he passed Crowley in the doorway, and Crowley felt himself go hot and tingly from the top of his head to the tips of his toes.

He followed them in and shut the door, locking it for good measure. This whole situation made him want to lock his doors and pull down his shades and curl himself up somewhere safe so that he could figure it all out. He had grown strangely paranoid in the past year, and what was even stranger was that the paranoia was starting to feel natural to him. Like he might have always been paranoid of prying eyes. 

He offered his guests water, or coffee, but they politely said no thank you. The young couple sat on a pair of straight backed, austere chairs in Crowely’s sitting room, while Crowley and Aziraphale sat (a respectful distance between them) on the large, black leather sofa. 

“So...I’m assuming that none of you are pickpocketing con artists?” Crowley said, raising his eyebrows and looking around at the three, hopeful faces that looked back at him. 

“No! We’re not!” This from the woman. “That was all a ruse to trick you into not trusting us.”

“That’s a pretty elaborate ruse,” Crolwey replied with a smirk. “I saw front page stories in all the local papers about the two of you and your dastardly deeds…” he pointed at the young couple, “and glossy, 8 by 10 photographs of  _ you _ Aziraphale, picking the pockets of a series of very impressionable looking men in restaurants and on street corners.”

He noticed that Aziraphale had suddenly gone quite pink in the face. “Ah. Actually Crowley, those might have been doctored photographs of me...erm...on a few dates.” The blond man was twisting his hands together anxiously in his lap and his eyes were cast down to the floor.

Crowley felt his own face go hot, but not because he was embarrassed. It was because he was suddenly frightfully  _ jealous _ . Dates? How dare Aziraphale go on dates that weren’t with Crowley?! The more rational part of his brain swiftly reminded him that he’d only met Aziraphale a few days ago, and that the man owed him nothing in the romance department, but still, the news stung a little, and he had no rational excuse for those feelings.

“Well,” he replied, clearing his throat to cover for his sudden flash of possessiveness. “I suppose it would be an easy job of doctoring the photos if that were the case.”

“Actually,” Newt said, “we think that they weren’t ‘doctored’ so much as they were um….miracled?” 

Crowley looked curiously at the young man, who shrugged. “What do you mean  _ miracled _ ?” he asked. 

“Crowley, there’s some stuff we need to tell you,” Anathema responded. “And you probably won’t believe it at first. It’s kind of out there.” 

“Try me,” Crowley said, removing his shades and running his hands through his hair. He sat back and crossed his arms. “I think you’ll be surprised at the amount of ‘out there’ things I’m prepared to accept as the truth.” 

Several minutes later, his mouth was hanging open. “A  _ demon _ ??” he said wonderingly. “I’m a  _ demon _ ?? Like from... _ Hell _ ?”

“Well, yes,” said Anathema, her face arranged into an expression of sympathy. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you. I know it’s not the best news. But, when I met you, and during the time we’ve all been friends, you did seem to be pretty accepting of the fact.”

“You know…” Crowley said, letting himself ponder the reality of being a servant of Lucifer the Fallen One, “now that you mention it...I had a feeling that perhaps I was mixed up in some things that weren’t one hundred percent on the level.” 

“Oh, but you’re a really nice person though!” this from Newt, who leaned forward in his chair and placed a friendly hand on Crowley’s knee. 

“Why does the word ‘nice’ make my insides itch?” Crowley wondered out loud. Rallying himself, he tried to approach this new information with an open mind. “Did I...how should I put this...do horrid things to people? Was I a villain? A psychopath? I certainly hope I didn’t … you know... _ kill _ anyone.”

“Well,” Anathema said cautiously. “To my knowledge, you only ever actually killed one other demon, and he was coming to kill  _ you _ , so I think that counts as self defense. And aside from that, you were more an agent of mischief than anything else. You apparently claimed credit for a lot of humanity’s horrific acts to get points from your bosses. But causing traffic jams and gluing coins to the pavement was the extent of your... evil.”

“That sounds about right,” Crowley replied with a shrug, inwardly breathing a sigh of relief that he wasn’t actually some heartless monster under the memory loss. 

“And  _ you're _ an  _ angel _ ?” he turned to look at Aziraphale, who sat next to him, fairly glowing with sweetness and light. “Makes sense,” he said. Aziraphale beamed a smile at him and he felt his heart melt a little in response. “Yeah,” he said, “it makes perfect sense. And it would explain the snapping.”

“I’m ever so glad you snapped too!” Aziraphale said. “It was frightfully confusing. I thought it was some sort of uncontrollable tic at first. Or that I’d had a rather large staff of personal servants who were trained to fulfill my every need...before the accident that is.”

“The accident…” Crowley said musingly. Everyone’s eyes went wide at the same time. 

“There weren’t any accidents!” Aziraphale exclaimed.

“Maybe I’m  _ not _ an alcoholic!” Crowley shouted at the same time. 

They looked at one another in surprised confusion. 

“I was told that I crashed my car after drinking too much,” Crowley explained to everyone. 

“Your car! Oh no!” Newt looked stricken. 

“Why are you upset about my car?” Crowley asked. 

“Because it was a mint condition, 1930s Bentley,” Newt looked as if he was going to start crying any second.

“No,” Crowley said. “They wouldn’t dream of destroying something like that….would they?” 

“Gabriel would,” Anathema replied, also looking glum. They’d told Crowley that Aziraphale’s financial advisor was likely an archangel who’d had it out for him for millennia. 

“But he wouldn’t need to destroy my car if there was never actually a car accident, would he?” Crowley asked, feeling a strange sort of anguish over losing a car he never remembered having in the first place. 

“That’s a good point actually,” Aziraphale chimed in. “And it would take a lot of effort. Hopefully he didn’t… I don’t know, snap it out of existence, or send it over a cliff or something,” 

Crowley frowned at him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, friend.” 

Then a thought occurred to him. “I also have an advisor of sorts. An agent for my horticulture gigs. You don’t think they would be involved in this do you?”

“What’s their name?” Asked Anathema.

“Beezie,” replied Crowley

Anathema groaned and put her head into her hands. “I’d bet good money that they’re Lord Beelzebub. Head demon who works opposite Gabriel,” she said into her criss crossed fingers. 

“Lord Beelzebub??” Crowley wasn’t sure how many more strange surprises he could handle within a fifteen minute span of time. “You mean, they’re...a demon?” He thought about that for a moment and realized it was probably true. Beezie was very grumpy, and they always smelled just a little bit like sulphur. “Oh boy,” he breathed. “I’ve really been played for a fool haven’t I?”

“Not any more than I have dear boy,” said Aziraphale, and Crowley glanced over at him to see his face suffused with gentle sympathy. He was extra beautiful when sympathetic. Crowley ripped his eyes away from the softly glowing man beside him on the sofa and turned back to Anathema and Newt. “So you think Beelzebub and Gabriel are working together to keep us forgetful and to take our powers away?”

Anathema nodded with a frown. “Yes, that’s exactly what I think is happening.”

“And they hate us...because we averted the apocalypse?” He said.

“Well,” replied Newt. “To be fair, it was a team effort. Anathema and I helped quite a bit and so did Adam,” (they’d told him about Adam quickly, but it was a subject Crowley wanted to revisit later). “I think, to hear the two of you talk,” Newt continued, “your bosses hated you long before that. They’re sort of hateful, vindictive people.” 

“Beezie- I mean _ Beelzebub _ , they’re a  _ demon _ ,” Crowley said, “I can understand them being horrible and vengeful. It’s in the job description. But Gabriel’s an  _ angel _ . Aren’t they supposed to be all goodness and light?”

Next to him Aziraphale made a snorting noise. “My dear boy,” he said gently. “I’ve read a lot of religious texts over the course of my life. I can feel the knowledge in my bones. You would not believe the terrible things angels have done in the name of God. It’s frightening really. Oh dear,” he paused, his eyes going fretful for a moment, “I certainly hope  _ I _ haven’t done anything horrible in my past…”

Crowley reached out a hand and placed it on Aziraphale’s soft, broad shoulder, “I wouldn’t worry if I were you angel. You don’t strike me as the doer of horrible deeds,” Aziraphale’s face melted into an expression of such relieved joy that Crowley had to turn away before his eyes betrayed his inner feelings. 

“So erm..what do we do now?” he asked, to change the subject.

Everyone went quiet for a moment.

“I think we should find Madam Tracy,” Anathema said.

“Who’s that?” Crowley asked. 

“She’s the older lady that came with me to talk to you last year,” Anathema said.

“Oh, you mean the racy one in the leopard print leggings?” Crowley asked. 

“Yes, that’s the one! Aziraphale possessed her body after the bookshop burned down and he was discorporated by stepping into the portal to heaven.” 

“What now?” said Crowley.

“I did what?” asked Aziraphale.

“We’ll explain later,” Anathema said. “Newt and I have to go actually. We were supposed to meet his parents for dinner back in Tadfield in..” she looked at her mobile, “an hour! Oh crap, we’ll be late! We can come back tomorrow and talk things over more and go find Madam Tracy. Will the two of you be OK in the meantime?”

Crowley and Aziraphale nodded.

“It’s probably best if you play along with Beelzebub or Gabriel if they contact you between now and tomorrow morning,” she added as she gathered up her large, patchwork bag as she and Newt rose to leave. “You told us once that they couldn’t spy on you inside buildings. Something about the privacy act of 1600 or something, so maybe don’t be seen together outside, just in case.” Then her face grew a little sad. “I remember you telling us that you had to live that way...hiding your friendship, for millennia, so it’s too bad that you have to do it again now…” with a sigh and a shrug, she turned and walked to the door with Newt by her side.


	14. Chapter 14

Aziraphale might not have been completely prepared to be suddenly alone with Crowley inside his flat. The abrupt absence of other people that occurred when the lift doors dinged shut behind Anathema and Newt brought with it a palpable sense of tension. They were not the people they’d thought they were a mere day ago, and Crowley had just learned about his true identity in the space of the last hour. 

“Should I leave?” Aziraphale asked, making a motion as if to step toward the lift. “Perhaps you’d like some time alone to…” he let the sentence hang without finishing it, letting Crowley fill in the blanks if he wanted to.

“No! No, I’d actually appreciate it if you would stay and talk for awhile,” Crowley seemed to truly want Aziraphale to hang around and Aziraphale felt his chest swell warmly with the evidence that the...demon (he swiftly amended the term “man”) wanted to spend more time with him. 

They walked back into the flat together. “Do you have any wine dear boy?” Aziraphale asked, casting curious eyes in the direction of Crowley’s barren kitchen. 

“No, regrettably I don’t. I was tricked into thinking I had a very human drinking problem by a wanker of a demon, so no.” Crowley responded with a frown.

Both of them absently snapped their fingers at the same time, both subconsciously wishing to miracle up some wine out of thin air. Then they looked at one another and burst out laughing. The tension ebbed and then fled. 

“I have an app on my phone that lets me order wine and food from local shops,”Crowley said, with laughter still tingeing his voice. “It’s no miracle, but in the absence of demonic powers, it’ll do the trick. They deliver it and everything. Are you peckish?” 

“Oh yes! I could eat a horse!” Aziraphale exclaimed, smiling broadly. “Some takeout curry and some wine would be delightful!”

Together they decided on a vintage and Aziraphale selected a wide range of dishes from the Indian restaurant a few streets over. He insisted on paying, as he would likely do most of the eating, as well as taking the leftovers home with him to his shop, being that Crowley ate so infrequently, but Crowley refused to hear of it. “Buying you dinner is the least I can do for not returning your calls.”

“Oh, my dear, that wasn’t your fault. That horrid angel and demon did a real number on us both. You can’t be held accountable for-”

“But I  _ can _ and I should be,” Crowley cut in. “You didn’t believe Gabiel when he told you I was a crook, but  _ I believed  _ Beezie. We could have saved some time if I had only questioned their word.”

Aziraphale realized it was pointless to argue with Crowley, and relented graciously, saying that he would pay for their next meal. The words ‘next meal’ made the demon’s cheeks go pink and he cleared his throat and shuffled his feet in a charming display of pleased shyness. 

They talked while they waited. Aziraphale told Crowley all he could remember of the last year, which wasn’t much outside of what he’d already told Crowley, and the demon did the same. Neither of them had any specific memories of their powers or their actions before the memory loss, but the story that Anathema and Newt had told them seemed to make sense somehow. It did not sound nearly as ludicrous as it should. 

“It does feel...I don’t know…  _ right _ that we were friends,” said Crowley, rubbing the back of his neck and studying the state of his nails with a sudden intense scrutiny. His cheeks had gone pink again, and Aziraphale found his bashfulness extremely appealing. It was at odds with his clear intentions to come off as a bad boy rebel.

“Yes,” Aizraphale agreed. “It  _ does _ make sense doesn't it? We seem to have a good rapport with another.”

“How  _ did  _ an angel and a demon become friends I wonder?” Crowley asked, shooting a sidelong glance at Aziraphale. “I forgot to ask how we met and where. We’ll have to ask Anathema and Newt when we meet them tomorrow.”

Now it was Aziraphale’s turn to blush. “Speaking of tomorrow dear boy, might I...could I possibly...well, if it isn’t too much of an imposition..” he began, struggling to find the courage to finish what he had to say.

“Spit it out, angel,” Crowley responded with a grin.

“Could I perhaps stay here tonight?” Aziraphale said, feeling a blush creeping its way swiftly up into his face. “I wouldn’t need to sleep, just to sit and read something on the sofa,” he rushed to explain, afraid that Crowley would assume he’d need sleeping accommodations. “I just don’t feel comfortable being alone at the moment. What with those two plotting and scheming..” The thought of the meddling duo of Gabriel and Beelzebub circling his shop, or watching like hawks, waiting for him to leave his residence was suddenly unbearable in the light of a burgeoning friendship with someone in exactly the same situation as himself. 

“Yeah, yeah, of course you can. That’s no problem,” Crowley replied after the briefest pause. “You can faff about out here as much as you want. I usually sleep at night, but I don’t have to, so if you want company…”

“Oh I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from your sleep!” Aziraphale exclaimed, holding up his hands in an attempt to reassure Crowley of his sincerity. 

“Well, we can play it by ear,” Crowley said. The buzzer rang just then and he got up to go pay for the wine and food, returning a few minutes later, his arms laden with two bottles of wine and a large paper bag from which fragrant smells of curry and ginger were emanating temptingly. 

They set up the food on a low coffee table that Crowley dragged over to the couch. Aziraphale had to smother renewed urges to snap his fingers to help Crowley with several mundane tasks. He found it interesting that he’d gotten that particularly confounding habit under control many months ago, only to have it struggling to resurface in Crowley’s company. He supposed that Crowley’s presence alone caused these subconscious habits to rise to the surface again, and wondered what other things the demon would bring out in him.

An enjoyable meal was spent with Aziraphale sampling many dishes and extolling how they were made, while Crowley nibbled on a samosa and drank wine. 

“I can’t tell you how good it feels to be able to drink again,” he said, looking at the glass of white in his hand as if it were the elixir of everlasting life and sighing contentedly. “I’ll never forgive Beelzebub and Gabriel for making me think I had a drinking problem.” 

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied, his cheeks and chest warm from two of his own glasses of wine. “I am almost certain that immortal beings don’t suffer from addictions in the same way that humans do. Would you like to try some of this chicken korma my dear? It’s simply delightful!”

Crowley nodded. “Sure, I’ll have a bite,”

Aziraphale, feeling emboldened by the wine, speared a savory piece of chicken, drenched in sauce and held it out for Crowley to eat. 

Crowley paused momentarily, his eyes flicking to Aziraphale’s face, but then he obediently leaned forward and wrapped his lips around the morsel of food, pulling it slowly from the tines of the plastic fork. Aziraphale felt the subtle vibrations of the movement of Crowley’s full lips against the fork travel down the length of the utensil and into his hand. This ghost of an echo of sensation shot straight to his core and resulted in an explosion of heat. 

Aziraphale might have let out a small, helpless noise. Crowley’s eyes went soft and gleaming as he pulled away, chewing swiftly and swallowing. “That was...well…” he said, seeming to lack the appropriate words to use, “it was delicious,” he finished, licking his lips, his eyes locked with Aziraphale’s. Aziraphale’s eyes however were soon drawn to the slick, pink slide of Crowley’s tongue as it darted out and wetted his sensuous mouth. 

“I want to kiss you,” he said, wide eyed and nervous and almost unable to believe the bold words that had just tumbled from his lips. “I’ve wanted to ever since the moment I first laid eyes on you in my shop. I know we were friends, and...and...I’m uncertain if we’ve ever kissed before now, but, I can’t stop thinking about it and-”

Aziraphale didn’t get much further with his stumbling explanation, because Crowley had slid closer on the sofa and wrapped his long, slender arms around Aziraphale’s shoulders. Their faces were now very close indeed, and Crowley’s lovely yellow eyes were gazing down into Aziraphale’s. 

“Yes,” the demon said, his warm breath breaking against Azirapahle’s lips. “Yes, I want to kiss you too. Very much...  _ So  _ much.”

“Perhaps we shouldn’t,” Aziraphale’s conscience made a last ditch effort at rational proprietary, at second guessing the urge to get physical with someone he might not at all feel that way about when his memories were returned. “I mean…” he continued, breathlessly, his gaze flicking from Crowley’s eyes down to his soft mouth and back again. “We don’t know what our relationship was... from before...what if… what if you didn’t feel  _ that way _ about me..”

“Not possible,” Crowley murmured, and then he kissed Aziraphale. 

_ Oh dear _ Oh good  _ Lord _ , the soft feel of Crowley’s mouth on his, the mingled flavors of white wine and curry, mixing with the faint scent of the demon’s posh cologne. Azirapahle sighed and melted into Crowley’s embrace. Crowley kept the kiss light. A simple press of lips against lips. He was trembling slightly. Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist and pulled him closer and bravely opened his mouth to deepen the kiss. He heard Crowley make a low, moaning noise and felt the demon’s arms tightening around his shoulders. Oh how good it felt to have this lithe, slender body pressed against his own. To feel Crowley’s achingly soft lips and the gentle probing of his tongue as it slipped into Aziraphale’s mouth and made friends with Aziraphale’s tongue in the most thrilling fashion imaginable. 

Before he even realized he’d done it, he’d pulled Crowley into his lap, where the demon straddled him and pressed himself even closer. Their kiss took on an urgent note. Aziraphale realized swiftly that he must never have done anything like this before. He was certain he hadn't because, memory loss be damned, he was 100% sure he’d have remembered something like  _ this _ . The way Crowley’s body felt in his arms. The way Crowley’s mouth, so agile and soft and wet, felt mingling with his own. How the weight of Crowley’s arse and thighs, pressing down against his crotch, where he was now very aware that he had an impressive erection...how that weight  _ felt _ .. The way it sent flashes of sharp pleasure all through his pelvis and deep into the core of him. He’d have remembered something like this happening, in the way he remembered the pleasure of eating, or the pleasure of chasing the plot of a good book down the page. If Aziraphale had  _ ever _ kissed and been kissed, if he’d ever embraced and been embraced in this fashion, there’d have been some form of muscle memory, he was certain of it. But this all felt startlingly, wonderfully, deliciously  _ new.  _

Crowley was making the most delightful, urgent little moaning sounds, and he’d begun moving his hips against Aziraphale, which in turn pulled a very undignified noise from Aziraphale, somewhere between a groan and a growl. He felt as if he had lost complete control of his conscious mind, and that his body was doing exactly what  _ it _ wanted, without asking for his mind’s opinion or permission. He grabbed Crowley’s firm arse in both hands and pulled the demon even closer, slotting them more tightly together, canting his hips up into that friction, and Crowley let out a sharp, high pitched whine against his lips. 

“Angel, oh,  _ angel, _ ” Crowley murmured gruffly between kisses. “I want you so badly. If you don’t think this is a good idea, then...you’re going to have to be the one to stop us.” He punctuated this little speech with a renewed roll of his hips, which made Aziraphale’s insides go all hot and shivery with lust.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped, breaking the kiss momentarily. “I..I don’t think I’ve wanted a single thing more than I want to keep kissing you…” Unfortunately, at this point, his horrible, obnoxious, useless brain had already supplied a rational precaution and pressed it forward into the center of his consciousness, like an actor with incredible stage fright being pushed out into the spotlight on opening night. “But…” he said, pulling back a moment, breathing heavily and fighting to regain his composure. 

“But…?” Crowley pulled away too and looked down at Aziraphale with lust blown eyes that were a lot more black than yellow at the moment, panting, his hands framing Aziraphale’s face. “What is it angel? What’s got you worried?”

Encouraged by Crowley’s kindness and patience, (and unaccountably pleased by his new nickname,) Aziraphale took a long, shuddering breath and very regretfully moved his hands from where they’d been gripping Crowley’s arse, up to the safer territory of the demon’s narrow waist. “But… we really don’t know what we were to one another. This…” he motioned with his chin at the heated space between their bodies, “these...feelings might be the result of...of our environment. Of the mystery of being tossed into this mad adventure together. I’d hate it if you didn’t feel this way about me before we lost our memories, and then had to...well... gently let me down after you regain them.” 

“What about you?” Crowley asked, leaning back a little as a fond sort of look, tinged with disappointment flitted across his face. “What if you’re the one who doesn’t feel this way about  _ me _ after we get our memories back? It could go either way you know…”

“I suppose it could, no matter how unlikely that seems in this...erm...moment. Still, I just don’t think it’s right to do something we can’t easily...pull back from. If that makes sense?”

Crowley’s face grew a little sad, but also, there was resignation and understanding in his expression as well. “I get it angel. I do. Let’s… let’s keep it platonic for now.”

With a sigh, Aziraphale helped Crowley off of his lap to sit beside him again. They clasped hands as their bodies cooled down and certain parts of their anatomies slowly returned to their pre-tumescent states. 

“I still maintain,” said Crowley, stroking Aziraphale’s wrist with his thumb in a way that made Aziraphale instantly regret removing him from his lap, “That regardless of what my mind thought before the memory loss, my body still wanted to shag the daylights out of you.” 

Crowley was gazing at Aziraphale with a heated intensity that made Aziraphale’s stomach go all fluttery. “If you keep saying things like that dear boy, we’ll be right back where we started,” he said unsteadily. 

They maintained eye contact for a moment longer, and it looked almost as if Crowley would lunge at him and begin snogging him again, but, the demon sat up straighter and let go of Aziraphale’s hand in order to run it through his copper tresses and tug his shirt back into some semblance of neatness. Aziraphale too pulled his waistcoat back down, as it and his shirt had gotten quite mussed in their exchange. 

They talked long into the night, letting the subject matter shift organically from topic to topic, making each other laugh, relearning each other’s mannerisms and facial expressions. It felt to Aziraphale as if he were meeting a friend he’d gone to primary school with. Someone he hadn’t seen for a long time, who’d grown and changed in the interim, but whom he knew very well nonetheless. There was a familiarity around Crowley that was undeniable. Even his lust for the demon felt familiar, despite the fact that acting on it did not. 

Somewhere around four in the morning, Crowley let out a wide yawn and stretched his limbs in a particularly serpentine manner. 

“You should go to bed my dear,” Aziraphale told him. “I’ll be fine out here with a book.”

Crowley blinked yellowly at him for a moment. “Oh, well, if you wouldn’t mind... I do like to get in a few hours a night.” He paused for a moment, and a cautious look ghosted across his features “Would you care to...join me?” he asked, hesitantly, rushing to add, “Not for anything ...sexual. Just lying down together, being close… would that be something you’d like?” 

Aziraphale beamed at him. “Oh, that would be lovely. And.. it is a thing that friends do isn’t it? I believe people call it  _ cuddling _ ,” 

This for some reason made Crowley laugh, deep and unselfconscious laughter bubbled up out of him, and his unique eyes crinkled at the corners. “Yes, angel, it is called cuddling. I’m glad you’re open to trying it with me.”

Together they walked, hand in hand to Crowley’s bedroom, which was as bare and austere as everything else in his flat. Aziraphale removed his jacket and waistcoat, took off his bow-tie and toed off his shoes while Crowley stripped down to his pants and a vest. Together they climbed into Crowley’s king size bed and got under the black silk sheets. Aziraphale, unsure how one started this thing called cuddling, lay on his back, nervous and stiff as a board.

He did not have to wonder long, for quite suddenly, there were a pair of slender arms and legs wrapping around him and Crowley was nuzzling his face into Aziraphale’s neck. 

“Mmmmf,” said Crowley, “this is nice.” He sighed and burrowed closer to Aziraphale. Aziraphale felt his body slowly relaxing as the smell of Crowley’s silky hair and posh cologne enveloped him in a soft cocoon, and the heat of their bodies pressed together spread to form a sort of warm haze that bloomed through his chest and out down his limbs. He sighed his own sigh and relaxed into Crowley’s embrace, grasping the demon’s arm where it was flung across his chest. 

He felt glimmers of sexual arousal sparking inside him, but tamped them down with a deep breath. This wasn’t about sex. It was about feeling close to someone he cared about. It was about taking comfort in the arms of a good friend. He had had very limited physical contact in the year since his fake accident...since his memories were apparently stolen away, and this was a wonderful chance to soak up some much needed affection. 

He should not have been surprised when his eyes filled up with tears that spilled down the side of his face. Crowley, likely feeling a sudden, unexpected dampness, lifted his head to look at Aziraphale. “Hey, angel, are you alright?” 

“I’m not sure,” Aziraphale admitted. He kept his eyes fixed on Crowley’s now blurry ceiling, unable to look at the demon yet, for fear it would make him cry in earnest. “I am feeling... a lot of feelings at the moment.”

“What sorts of feelings?” Crowley asked, and then his thumb was reaching up to wipe away a fresh tear from Aziraphale’s face, and that caused the flood gates to open. Aziraphale turned and gathered Crowley into his arms and sobbed. Crowley hung on tightly, wrapping himself around Aziraphale as much as he could, making soft, cooing noises and petting his hair. 

“Hey now angel, oh...oh don’t cry,” he said haltingly, softly, while he stroked Aziraphale’s hair and squeezed him tight. “Don’t cry. It will be OK. We’ll get our memories back, and we’ll beat those horrible wankers at their own game. You just watch. It will all turn out right in the end.” 

“I’m...I’m only crying p-partly because of what was done to us,” Aziraphale choked out around wet hitches in his chest. “I’m also crying because...well, it’s been so very long since I’ve held someone and...and been held like this. And...well…” he paused, sniffling into Crowley’s hair, searching for the right words to say. “I get a feeling that I haven’t actually _ ever _ held anyone before..not like this..not in six thousand years.” 

He felt Crowley nod against the side of his face. “I get that same feeling,” Crowley replied. “Which doesn't make sense to me. That is a very long time not to cuddle with  _ anyone _ . How had we never done this together before? If it feels so very good?”

The words bubbled up from inside Aziraphale before he could stop them. “I think perhaps that I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said, then cried harder, because he’d never said a thing like that before (at least he was almost certain he had not) and because such words are scary under any circumstances. “I know we don’t know what we were before last year,” he added through his fresh spate of sobs, “and I know I can’t expect you to feel the same way, being that we just met a few days ago...I know it’s silly-”

“Angel,” Crowley pulled Aziraphale’s face out from where it was buried against his neck and looked him in the eyes, and Aziraphale saw that tears were gleaming there as well. ”Angel, it’s OK. Really it is.” He paused for a moment and a look of determination crossed his face. “I’m fairly certain I’m in love with you too. At least, I think about you all the time and I want to kiss you every minute of the day. If that’s what love is, then...well… I feel it.” Kindness and understanding shone in the demon’s bright yellow eyes as they gazed into Aziraphale’s.

“Really?” Aziraphale felt a spark of joy leap to life inside his chest. “Do you really? Oh Crowley...I”

“Sshh… shush up now angel,” Crowley silenced Aziraphale with a soft kiss on the lips. “Let's not talk anymore. Let's just lie here and rest and be together until morning. Tomorrow we can talk it all out.”

Aziraphale nodded, leaning in and kissing Cowley back with a fierce press of lips before turning onto his back again and letting Crowley curl up against his side. He took in a deep, shaky breath and squeezed Crowley tight with his arm, and heard the demon sigh happily. Tomorrow seemed like a promising day. Hopefully, Madam Tracy would be able to help fill in some gaps and together, all of them could find some way to reverse the damage that had been done. And even if Crowley and Aziraphale were not meant to be together in the end, it felt like enough right now to hold him and rest in comfort and warmth together. After a few more minutes, he heard a soft, frankly adorable snore from the red haired demon and smiled up at Crowley’s ceiling. 

He fell asleep so gradually that he hadn’t realized it had happened until the next morning’s sunlight on his face woke him. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one took a long time, but the last chapter will be along shortly. Thanks for all the lovely comments and support! :D

Together, they went to meet Anathema and Newt at Madam Tracy’s large, Victorian style, three story row house in Soho. She and a cantankerous old man, calling himself Shadwell, sat with them in Tracy’s sitting room. They had tea and and biscuits and made awkward conversation for a few minutes before Crowley broached the subject of what to do now. 

“Apparently, Aziraphale here inhabited your body for a little while?” he began, feeling a bit rude to be bringing up such an intimate subject, but, if not now…

“Oh yes!” exclaimed Madam Tracy, apparently completely at ease with the topic. “He was ever so polite about it too! One minute, I’m leading my Saturday afternoon seance, channeling the dearly departed, and the next, I’m actually channeling the dearly departed. It was quite a surprise!” She smiled brightly at Crowley and her smile softened to a motherly glow when she turned her eyes to Aziraphale. “You don’t remember any of it, deary?” she asked.

“Sadly no,” Aziraphale replied. “Sounds like it was quite the event.” 

“Oh yes!” Tracy piped, still grinning. “The interesting thing is, ever since that day, I’ve had actual powers.”

“What do you mean actual powers?” asked Crowley, narrowing his eyes. 

“I mean just what I said.” Tracy replied. “I can actually channel the voices of the dead from beyond the veil now. Not that I was necessarily faking it before you see…” It seemed to Crowley that this had been exactly what she’d been doing, but for politeness sake, he kept his mouth shut. “It’s just that now, the spirits...they come to me quite easily,” Tracy continued. “Your husband here must have paved the way as it were.”

“Oh, he’s not my-” Aziraphale began, his face taking on the hue of a neon pink sunset. Tracy held up a placating hand, bedecked with a ring on each finger and waved it dismissively. 

“Oh, silly me…I know the two of you aren’t legally married, but, after six thousand years spent together, more or less, it becomes something of a common law situation no?”

Aziraphale looked for a moment as if he were going to engage with Madam Tracy in an extended discussion about the status of their relationship and the myth of common law marriage in the UK and so Crowley interjected. “You were saying…” he said, looking pointedly at Tracy and raising his eyebrows above his shades. 

“Oh yes! I was saying that now, the spirits come to me left and right. I don’t even have to bring out the crystal ball or make any sorts of incantations, and they just pop in and say hello! Why, there’s one standing over there at this very moment! Hallooo Mr. Addison! I trust you’re well today!” She put a polite smile on her face and waved in a friendly fashion at an empty corner of the room. After a moment, if Crowley squinted, he could see a vague outline of a male person, standing there. He hadn’t noticed it before.

“That’s...that’s a ghost?” he asked, truly impressed. 

“Yes it is!” Tracy replied. There are three more who like to hang about upstairs. We have however told them they’re not to poke their heads into Mr. Shadwell and my marital chambers...if you catch my drift.” she grinned at Mr. Shadwell, who almost spit out his tea. 

Crowley decided to swiftly change the subject. “So, we have a situation here, and I’m sure Newt and Anathema have filled you in on the particulars. There’s this horrid demon and angel who’ve conspired to rob us of our memories and our powers.”

“Oh yes, that is a dreadful shame. I never liked those two. From the minute I first saw them out at the air base. Seemed a sneaky pair right from the start!” Madame Tracy muttered a curse under her breath and spat (luckily in a dry fashion that seemed mostly for show). 

“Do you think, now that you’re erm...more connected to the spirit world, and have more powers, that you’d be able to help come up with a way to help us get our powers and our memories back?” Aziraphale asked, sounding hopeful. Crowley smothered the urge to wrap an arm around his shoulders. 

“Come to think of it, I bet this has something to do with the prophecy!” Tracy exclaimed

“Of course!” Anathema yelled, grabbing hold of Newt by the knee, making him jump. “I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before!” She turned to Tracy. “You still have it, I’m assuming…”

“Of course I do my dear,” Tracy responded. “Give us a minute and I’ll go and fetch it.” 

She got up and teetered on a pair of spike heels over to the stairs and up. 

“Prophecy?” Crowley asked, looking with curiosity at Anathema.

“Oh, well, it’s sort of a long story,” Anathema replied. “But the short version is that I am the distant but direct descendent of the witch Agnes Nutter, who wrote a whole bunch of prophecies in a special book, and all of them came true. Thing is… some of them sort of escaped the book. Pages got ripped out, the book got damaged over the centuries, and a few of the prophecies sort of made their way out into the world to find the people they were foretelling about… If that makes sense…” 

“Sort of,” Aziraphale replied. “And so I take it that one of these prophecies made its way to Madame Tracy?”

Anathema nodded. At that moment, they heard the woman herself, clumping her way back down the stairs and all four of them looked expectantly at the doorway to the sitting room. Shadwell meanwhile was investigating the tea tray for errant biscuits. 

“Here it is, loves!” Tracy returned, waving a ragged slip of paper in her bejeweled hand. “I couldn’t for the life of me understand it when it blew in from the street late last year, but now, perhaps we can make some sense out of it.” She opened the scrap of paper and read it out loud.

“Summon thee the infect and the archer and bind them to thy will.” 

“The insect and the archer…” mused Aziraphale, who had risen from his seat and gone to look at the prophecy over Tracy’s shoulder. 

“Insect?” Tracy asked, befuddled. 

“Yes Tracy, remember? “ Anathema said gently. “Many of Agnes’ prophecies involved long esses, that look like ‘Fs’, so what reads as “infect” is actually ‘insect’

“The insect and the archer…” Aziraphale said again, slowly, thoughtfully. “Gabriel told me to call him ‘Gabriel Archer’, I assumed after finding out he was an angel that it was a pseudonym. But isn’t he referred to as…”

“The archangel Gabriel!” said Crowley. 

“Yes!” Anathema jumped up and down in her excitement.

“Who is the insect I wonder?” Aziraphale said.

“Must be tha horrid little person wi the great fly on their heed,” mumbled Shadwell around a biscuit. 

“Beelzebub! Of course! Newt replied. “When we first met them, they had a rather large house fly perched atop their head. I think it’s par for the course with demons, but It’s frankly disgusting to look at.” He shuddered at the memory. “So the prophecy is telling you to summon Gabriel and Beelzebub and to bind them to your will.” He paused for a moment thinking. “Do you know how to do that?” He asked Tracy. 

She shrugged. “I’ve never summoned anything but ghosts before.”

“If Agnes’ prophecy told you to do it, then you’ll be able to do it,” affirmed Anathema. “Believe me. My ancestor may have been vague, but the closer a prophecy comes to being fulfilled, the more sense it makes, and it always comes true.”

“Oh well, I s’pose I could give it my best shot,” Tracy said, sounding like she was warming up to the idea. “I have some black and red candles and some very manky incense I could burn. Make it properly creepy and dark in here. I bet that would work!” 

Crowley wanted to remind her that the types of candles and incense one burned did not hold all that much bearing on whether or not one could reliably summon a celestial and a demonic being into an old lady’s sitting room in Soho, but he kept quiet. 

“When shall we try it?” Tracy asked. 

“I’d hoped we could do it as soon as possible,” said Aziraphale, casting a look in Crowley’s direction that might have been hopeful, but also might have been apprehensive. 

“How about right now?” Tracy asked. 

Everyone nodded in agreement. Everyone was also suddenly nervous. Crowley had some idea what might be going through the minds of his friends. What happened if Tracy succeeded in summoning them, and yet couldn’t ‘bind’ Gabriel and Beelzebub’s will to her? What would happen if she simply summoned an angry angel and an angry demon into her sitting room and then all of them got smited or zapped or burnt to a crisp? 

Tracy tottered off to fetch her various forms of mood lighting, and Shadwell cleared away the tea tray while Crowley and Aziraphale fretted nervously in their own unique ways. Anathema had pulled Newt aside to talk to him about something, and for a moment, Crowley and Aziraphale had a brief island of privacy in which to talk. 

“I certainly hope this works out, dear boy,” Aziraphale muttered, looking down at his hands like Crowley was learning he did when he was nervous. “I’d hate it if we never got the chance to learn who we really are under all this memory loss. Or worse… if something were to… happen to one of us.” 

“Crowley put a hand on Aziraphale's soft shoulder and squeezed. “Angel,” he said, in as reassuring a voice as he could manage, “Well be OK. Don’t you worry about us. We’ve apparently spent six millennia getting out of scrapes together. I’m sure this one will turn out fine in the end.” Even though he sounded calm on the outside, Crowley wasn’t immune to the nerves he knew Aziraphale must be experiencing right now.

“But.. what if…” Aziraphale didn’t finish the sentence, but Crowley knew what he’d meant to say. What if they hadn’t loved each other before the memory loss. What if they’d felt more like siblings, or simply good friends. What if their snog session on Crowley’s couch made things painfully awkward between them. And then, what if these feelings they had now evaporated when their memories finally returned. Crowley felt that potential loss keenly. What they had now was so very special and exhilarating, full of promise. It would be such a shame to watch it wither and die under the harsh reality of a friendship that had no room for this sort of love inside it.

Crowley stepped closer and took Aziraphale’s face in his hands. He tilted Aziraphale’s chin up so that the angel was looking him in the eyes, looking at him with those gorgeous, stormy eyes. He felt the breath hitch in his chest at how incredibly, unfairly beautiful Aziraphale was. “Angel,” he whispered. “It will all be alright. I love you. You love me. That’s not going to change any time soon.” 

Aziraphale nodded, a small, hopeful smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and Crowley couldn’t help himself. He pulled Aziraphale close and kissed him, briefly, softly, gently on the lips, then pulled away and smiled back at him. They let go of each other reluctantly and turned to meet several pairs of eyes as their newfound friends had frozen in place and were staring at them in awe. 

“Well! Twas aboot time!” said Shadwell with a frustrated huff, and that seemed to break the spell. Everyone stopped staring. Except Tracy, who maintained an expression that could only be called something halfway between a smile and a leer. 

She stepped forward, arms full to bursting with several strange looking items and dumped them as carefully as she could onto the round table with the crystal ball that sat in the middle of the sitting room. Among the profusion were no less than four tall, red and black candles, three of which had glitter infused with the wax, a large black candle in the shape of a skull with the wick coming out the top, a medium sized glass ashtray, a few balled up newspapers, a water pistol and a very old looking book. “I have a plan!” she announced as she unfolded herself from arranging these silly yet somehow convincingly occult items around the crystal ball at the center of the table. The others, including Crowley and Aziraphale gathered round to hear what she had to say. 

After she had spoken for several minutes, detailing exactly what she thought they should do, Aziraphale and Crowley nodded in agreement. It was a ludicrous, slapdash plan at best, but since Agnes Nutter had pretty much assured them it would work, in not so many words, they thought it worth a try. 

Once the candles had been arranged and lit, the crystal ball switched on (it had a dim low wattage light bulb at the center of it that gave it it’s otherworldly glow) and the curtains drawn, Tracy asked them all to take their places. They gathered around the table and Tracy opened the massive, old looking book she’d brought downstairs with her and began an incantation in a low, very serious sounding voice. 

At first, nothing happened. Then, as she continued to chant, while reading the lines from the old book, Latin it was, the lights began to flicker and fluctuate in the sitting room. Soon, the electric lights dimmed and went dark, leaving only the assortment of rather garish, sparkling, red and black candles to illuminate the sitting room. They cast a yellow glow across everyone’s faces and elongating the shadows that now curled threateningly in corners and flickered across the ceiling.

Before much of this could fully register with Crowley, he saw a hazy mist begin to take form and swirl above the space beside the table, behind Newt and Anathema. The young couple saw everyone’s alarmed looks and swiftly moved out of the way so that the crowd around the table went from a circle to more of a U shape. Everyone’s eyes glued to the quickly expanding cloud of mist forming several feet above Tracy’s oriental rug. Tracy, to her credit, did not let the developing events stop her from chanting. She kept up the litany of latin words, her voice steady and not losing one ounce of its occult drama. She was a professional after all.

The mist began to thicken and elongate, taking the shape of two, humanoid figures that became more detailed as the chanting continued, and as everyone looked on in apprehension and wonder. Eventually, they resolved themselves into Gabriel and Beelzebub, who looked about them in understandable confusion. Gabriel wore a perfectly tailored light gray suit with a jaunty, cashmere scarf tossed about his neck and shoulders and Beelzebub, by comparison, looked like something dug up from a not-so-fresh grave. They wore a black suit, with an elaborate metal clasp at their throat, and on top of their head sat a massive black housefly. It twitched its wings fretfully as they looked out at the assembled humans (and angel and demon) with a baleful expression.

Tracy stopped her chanting for a moment to address the unusual pair. “Archangel Gabriel! Lord Beelzebub of Hell! I have summoned thee with the spell of the ancients and I command thee to bend to my will!!” 

Beelzebub smirked and made as if to step forward, but stopped short with a look of confusion when their limbs would not comply. 

“Do not try to resist me foul creatures!” Intoned Tracy threateningly. “For if you do, I shall have the attendant angel and demon smite thee with implements of divine and infernal...um... smiting!” she finished a bit awkwardly. At this point, Gabriel and Beelzebub seemed to notice the fact that Aziraphale was holding a plastic water pistol, aimed at Beelzebub’s head and that Crowley was brandishing a rather convincing ball of flames in the palm of his hand and holding it out toward Gabriel. 

“What is the meaning of this?!” Gabriel declared, sounding offronted, but in the fake sort of way a person does when they know the jig is up and are trying a last ditch effort to convince the people with the pitchforks and torches of their innocence. “I’m Mr. Fell’s financial advisor! How did I end up in this...this.. Strange woman’s house?”

Beelzebub at least didn’t bother trying to pretend not to be a demon. They simply glowered at Crowley with a murderous gleam in their icy eyes. Neither angel nor demon made a move toward the group of onlookers gathered around the table. 

Tracy ignored Gabriel. “I bind thee to my will with the ancient spell of binding!” She intoned with a sweep of her beringed hands. “And now you have to do what I say,” she finished, rather less dramatically than she’d begun. “Or else!” she added for good measure. 

“Or elzzz what?” Buzzed Beelzebub, their blue eyes flicking over to Tracy, their boil encrusted mouth sliding into a wicked sneer.

“Or else we’ll smite thee with holy water and hellfire of course!” Tracy snapped, beginning to maybe sound a little impatient but with an edge of fear to her voice. 

“You’re bluffing,” Beelzebub said, their sneer deepening and becoming more malevolent. 

“I assure you, she is not,” this from Aziraphale. Crowley fought valiantly not to turn and stare at his friend. “It is the easiest thing for me, an angel, to waltz into any church in Soho and fill up this water pistol with holy water. It’s not like it’s under lock and key. And furthermore, my inhabiting this good lady’s body last year gave her the ability to draw upon powerful occult forces!” 

This was pretty unassailable logic, and Beelzebub ceased speaking, abruptly with an alarmed look at the dripping, plastic gun in Aziraphale’s hands. 

“What is it you want?” Gabriel, always a man of business apparently, had placed his hands on his hips and fixed them with an impatient look. Even from Crowley’s vantage point though, of clutching a glass ashtray full of flaming, tightly balled up bits of newspaper, he could see that the archangel was nervous. For some miraculous reason, neither Gabriel or Beelzebub actually seemed to be able to move from the spot. Perhaps there had been something to Tracy’s claim that the book she was reading from had been sold to her by an actual witch at an occult themed street fair in 1974. 

“We want our memories back!” Aziraphale shouted, trying his very best to sound threatening, and making a good go of it. 

“And our powers!” Added Crowley, glowering at the awful pair of beings in Tracy’s sitting room. “You had no right to take them away in the first place and we want them back!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Snapped Gabriel. “You totally messed up the apocalypse! You angered God Almighty!”

“And Lucifer,” added Beelzebub helpfully.

“And Lucifer!” Agreed Gabriel, nodding for emphasis. “You don’t deserve to get your memories and powers back. You’re criminals and you needed to be punished!” 

“You’re lying!” Aziraphale yelled, his voice suddenly louder and more commanding than Crowley had ever heard it before (which wasn’t saying much as he’d known Aziraphale for about a week, but still…). The angel had drawn himself up to his full height and raised the water pistol in a threatening manner. His eyes, usually soft and luminous, had gone steely. “You’re lying because your operation is so small. Just the two of you! We’ve never seen hide nor hair of another demon or angel. There were no proclamations. No word from on high or from down below. This is a solo operation with just the two of you being horrid, vindictive….bad people!” 

“Look,” Crowley, shoving down the flush of fond warmth he felt in that moment for his new/old friend, decided he’d had about enough. “Give us our memories and our powers back or we’ll bloody vaporize you both. Don’t think we won’t. We’re very unstable individuals.” 

Gabriel and Beelzebub looked at one another, then at the group of very angry people before them, then back at each other again. 

Beelzebub shrugged “This is turning out to be way more work that it was supposed to be,” They said to Gabriel.

Gabriel’s jaw twitched and his eyes turned hard. “Oh so that’s it is it?” he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “They summon us with some second rate conjurer's book and threaten us with a water pistol full of tap water and an ashtray full of flaming newspaper and you give up?!”

“Can you move your legs?” Beelzebub asked calmly. “Because I can't.”

Gabriel looked down at his feet. His face screwed up with an expression of concentration for a moment, and when he looked back at Beelzebub, he’d gone pale. “Oh shit,” he said. 

“Precisely,” Beelzebub responded with a roll of their eyes. “They have us over a barrel Gabe. I’m not really sure what we can do at this point. I’m assuming you’ve tried to use your powers yes? I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll only be able to use them to help these wankers get their own back.” 

Gabriel nodded glumly. “Yeah. There’s a feeling like my powers are shackled for a very specific use. Everything feels really… narrow all of a sudden.” He shrugged. “Fine,” he said. “It was getting old anyway.”

“Fun while it lasted though wasn’t it?” Beelzebub said, giving him a small half smile from their ruined mouth. 

“Yeah,” Gabriel replied with a half smile of his own. 

They both turned toward the assembled humans and non-humans and Gabriel spoke. “Alright!” he said with a belabored sigh. “It seems these two insane criminals have convinced you gullible humans to help them get their powers and memories back. Don’t blame us if they go feral and start blowing things up around London. No longer our responsibility!”

Crowley wanted to launch himself at Gabriel, but they were so close to being restored to their old selves. He simply gritted his teeth and waited. 

“I, Gabriel, hereby return your powers and memories to you, Aziraphale, Principality and Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden.” 

“And I, Lord Beelzebub return your powers and memories to you, Crowley, Demon of Hell,” They then glanced at Gabriel with raised eyebrows. Together, angel and demon snapped their fingers. 

Crowley felt a rush of air and light surround him, as if the sun had burst through Madame Tracy’s thick, brocade curtains and hit him in the face. Then...everything went black.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prepare thyselves readers, for piles and piles of fluff. 
> 
> thank you everyone who has left me such lovely and supportive comments. <3

Aziraphale felt a rush as if a river were flowing through the middle of him. His eyesight went blurry and he dropped the water pistol and doubled over with a soft moan as he felt the hole in the center of his heart fill to the brim with all that he’d been missing for the last year. His powers! His powers were back! He could  _ feel  _ them coursing through his arms and legs, down to his toes and fingers. 

And his….memories? He looked over at Crowley, who had dropped his flaming ashtray to the floor, where it had promptly snuffed itself against Madame Tracy’s carpet. 

Crowley.

_ Crowley….  _

_ CROWLEY!! _

The red haired demon, standing a few feet from him was Crowley! 

He felt a rush of memories colliding in his brain. A brain that was luckily big enough and complex enough and old enough and hopped up on angelic powers enough to handle a download of over six thousand years of memories suddenly just  _ being there. _

There were so many memories. Going back millennia. Aziraphale remembered the entirety of human evolution, the very creation of the earth itself. He gasped as it all came flowing back in. But, despite the mad rush of billions of images that were rapidly unfolding inside his mind, the one constant, the most welcome, beautiful memories were all of Crowley.

_ Crowley, standing beside him on the Western wall of the Garden. His rippling red hair and black robes fluttering in the warm breeze coming off the desert. His black wings spread out behind him, glimmering like starling wings in the light, as he second guessed the Ineffable Plan. _

_ Crowley, by his side at the crucifixion of Christ, telling Aziraphale his name was different now. _

_ Crowley laughing and drinking with him over the remnants of a tray of oysters in the Taberna. His short, copper curls catching the light of the midday sun coming in through Petronias’ curtain.  _

_ Crowley in the Bastille, rescuing him with a snap of his fingers and a wicked grin. _

_ Crowley in The Globe Theater, his hair long and lustrous, his black doublet making him look oh so sleek and handsome. _

_ Crowley asking him for holy water. Crowley with a wounded look in his eyes in the Bentley as Aziraphale walked away. Crowley, with a wounded look in his eyes as Aziraphale told him it was over.  _

_ Crowley’s triumphant face on the Tadfield Airbase, smiling. _

_ Crowley across from him at the Ritz, lifting a delicate glass of Champagne, his face suffused with affection, saying “To the world.”  _

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered, feeling his heart fill up with love. 

The demon in question had torn his shades from his face and was looking at Aziraphale as if he were also seeing him for the first time. His yellow eyes, always so pretty Aziraphale thought, were trained on Aziraphale’s face and were gleaming with unshed tears. 

“Angel…” he said, softly, reverently. 

And then they were in each other’s arms. Crowley wrapped Aziraphale up tight and buried his face in Aziraphale’s neck and he was sobbing, and Aziraphale was sobbing, too. 

“I’ve missed you so much, angel,” Crowley said wetly, his voice muffled by Aziraphale’s collar. “There was this hole in my heart and I didn’t know it was a you-shaped hole, but it was, and oh Satan, I’ve missed you so much!”

“And I you my dear,” Aziraphale’s voice broke and he sniffled loudly into Crowley’s sweet smelling hair, squeezing the slender demon so tight, he was afraid he might break a rib. “I was so lonely, and everything felt so empty and..and..it was because  _ you _ weren’t there!”

“I’ll never leave you again,” said Crowley, squeezing back just as tightly, tight enough to make Aziraphale let out a little puff of a compressed sigh from the pressure of the demon’s arms. 

“Of course not, my dear. Of course not. I’ll be by your side from this day on.”

And then they pulled back to look at one another, and both of them wiped ineffectually at their faces, trying to dry way too many tears with their bare hands. Someone, Anathema maybe, shoved a balled up fistful of tissues in between them and they both gratefully used the tissues to mop up some of the tears. 

“Crowley… might we speak in private?” Aziraphale asked, his heart suddenly in his throat. Crowley had sobbed, had squeezed him tight, had said he’d never leave Aziraphale again, but was that the same as what Aziraphale was feeling? He couldn’t be sure. 

“Of course angel. Whatever you wish,” Crowley turned then to the dewy eyed humans standing, watching them with awe and happiness. “Pardon us,” he said, “we’ll be back,” and then he wrapped an arm around Aziraphale’s waist and snapped his fingers. 

They were inside Aziraphale’s bookshop in an instant. Aziraphale knew that transporting oneself via miracle (demonic or angelic) was a thing they both did very often before the loss of their memories and their powers, but it had been a year, and he let out a little gasp of surprise to find them suddenly in the coziest, most welcoming, warmest home he’d ever known. “Oh Crowley! Thank you!” he exclaimed, once the slight disorientation of the sudden change in scenery wore off. 

“I uh, figured you’d want to be somewhere familiar,” Crowley said, scrubbing at the back of his neck in that charming way he did when he felt shy. It was a move Aziraphale had seen when he’d met Crowley after the memory loss, and hadn’t known that he’d seen it thousands of times before. And the simple knowledge, that now he had those memories back, that catalogue of charming Crowley-isms, made him so very happy. 

Aziraphale smiled broadly and let out a shaky sigh. “Thank you my dear. It was an excellent decision.” He looked about him at the now extra familiar shelves of books, stretching back into the depths of the darkened shop. The smells were all so familiar now. Not familiar from one year of living inside the shop, but familiar from  _ several hundred _ years of living inside the shop. He knew all of the tiniest cracks in the walls, the ages and origins of all the ancient furniture. This bookshop was  _ home _ in the deepest and most meaningful of ways.

And Crowley was home, too. Just seeing him, standing there in all his slender, black clad, copper haired glory made Aziraphale’s heart sing. But...was Crowley’s heart singing too, in the same sort of way? He had to find out. 

“Crowley…” he began, building up his inner reserves of courage in order to ask that one, hopeful, dreadful question. 

“Angel,” Crowley responded, stepping closer. “I think we should talk.”

“Yes Crowley, yes, we should,” Aziraphale tried not to fidget, but he was so very nervous. He knew ideally that he had complete control of his human corporations’ physical reactions to things, but all of that flew out the window when Crowley was near him. He twisted his hands together in front of his belly and licked his lips. “Would you like some tea?” he asked. 

“Yeah, sure,” Crowley looked a tiny bit put out, as if he’d been expecting Aziraphale to say something not tea related. 

Aziraphale nodded and went swiftly to the kitchen. Knowing where all of his different types of tea were in the cabinet from two different streams of memory was an interesting sensation. On one hand, he knew the black currant tea was on the top shelf to the left, next to the oolong because he’d found it there last September when he’d been in a mood for fruity tea. But he also knew it was there because he’d put it there some months before his “accident” and because the Aziraphale that had all of his memories knew flawlessly where all 38 boxes and tins of his tea were located. He supposed the twin memories would blend and become one eventually, but as of this moment, it was a funny thing. 

He could hear Crowley enter the kitchenette behind him as he fished two mugs from the cabinet next to the teas. Then he heard the demon step closer, hesitantly, as if unsure of where to put himself. “Aziraphale?” Crowley said softly, and Aziraphale felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

He turned and Crowley was standing there, very close, looking at Aziraphale with an almost unbearable fondness in his yellow eyes. 

“Angel,” he said, “I don’t think I need any tea.” 

“Oh,” Aziraphale let that one soft syllable escaping past his lips mere seconds before Crowley leaned in and kissed him. 

And then there really was no need for talking. Crowley’s arms came around Aziraphale’s middle and Aziraphale’s hands came to rest gently on Crowley’s narrow shoulders. For a long, heart swelling moment, they simply stood, lips pressed softly together in a gentle kiss. 

Crowley pulled away, looking down into Aziraphale’s eyes with an expression of awe painted across his sharp, handsome features. “I was right,” he said quietly. “We’d never kissed before the memory loss. But.. I wanted to. For a long time.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale breathed, still entranced by the demon’s soft gaze. “Yes. I wanted to too. For a long, long time.” 

“I still love you angel. I have since the Garden.”

Crowley’s words found their way straight to Aziraphale’s tender, beating heart and broke it open. “Oh my darling boy,” he said. “Oh Crowley, yes. I’ve loved you for the longest time.”

Crowley smiled, a grin of complete joy and pulled Aziraphale close again and this time their kiss was something else. No longer quite so soft and careful. More involved and more passionate. Aziraphale let out a soft moan and pulled Crowley tightly against him as the demon’s lips parted and they tasted each other and the kiss deepened. Very shortly they were both breathless and Crowley had Aziraphale pressed up against the edge of his kitchen countertop. 

“Shall we… perhaps..” Aziraphale did not want to stop kissing Crowley ever, but the countertop was starting to dig unpleasantly into his low back, and he  _ did _ have a comfortable bed upstairs in his small flat. 

“Go to bed?” Crowley asked against Azirapahle’s lips, his own quirking into a one sided smile that was decidedly devious. 

Aziraphale nodded. Hand in hand they made their way swiftly to Aziraphale’s bedroom, where Crowley methodically and with great care removed every stitch of Aziraphale’s clothing, kissing the swaths of skin his careful fingers revealed. Then he removed every stitch of his own. They lay on the bed together and let their hands roam over each other’s naked bodies. Fingertips skated reverently over soft skin, hollows and swells. Fingers were driven into soft hair and hands clasped at necks and around upper arms and gripped at hips. And they kissed and kissed and kissed. Aziraphale wanted to kiss Crowley forever. He smelled so very good, and his skin was so very soft, and his mouth, his hot, wet, mobile mouth as it sucked here and pressed kisses there and licked and nibbled across Aziraphale’s skin had the angel breathless and hot with need. 

Eventually, he decided it was high time he did some exploring of his own and pushed Crowley back on the bed so that he could lavish attention on the demon with his own hands and his own eager mouth. Of all the delicious things Aziraphale had tasted in his very long life, nothing quite compared to the salty-sweet taste of his demon’s skin. He kissed Crowley’s neck, and trailed tender kisses across his chest, delighting in the noises Crowley made and how he writhed under Aziraphale’s attentions. “My sweet, darling boy,” Aziraphale murmured into the hollow of Crowley’s belly. “My dearest, my darling,” he whispered into the crook of Crowley’s knee. 

When he took Crowley into his mouth, the demon arched and gasped, and Aziraphale held him by the narrow hips and showed him exactly how much he adored his lover’s taste. He watched from his thrilling vantage point, halfway down Crowley’s body as the demon writhed and gasped and cried out  _ angel, angel _ over and over. 

Crowley was eager to return the favor, but Aziraphale shook his head. There was plenty of time for that later, instead, he preferred to hold Crowley in his arms and kiss him, to keep him close. Crowley reached a hand down between them and worked Aziraphale while they kissed and before long, Aziraphale was making sharp, keening noises against Crowley’s lips as he felt the pleasure inside him peak and clench and explode in a breathtaking climax. 

Aziraphale very much enjoyed the effortless power of snapping away the mess of his emissions, and then they held each other for a long time, trading soft kisses and soft words. Crowley wrapped himself around Aziraphale in a way that was very reminiscent of his snake form, and Aziraphale squeezed the slender demon tightly in his arms and buried his face in Crowley’s hair. 

“Why didn’t we do this a few thousand years ago angel?” Crowley mumbled, sounding happy and sleepy in the extreme. 

“Well, for one, we were told repeatedly that we’d be permanently discorporated if we were caught having a chat over tea,” Aziraphale replied. “And secondly, I didn’t know you felt that way.”

“I did,” Crowley said, unnecessarily. “I did for so long. I’ve wanted to shag you since probably four seconds after I laid eyes on you.” 

“Same my love, I felt the same.” Aziraphale paused for a moment, running fingers through Crowley’s hair and pressing a tender kiss to the little snake tattoo below his right ear. 

“I suppose we’ll just have to make up for lost time then,” Crowley mumbled. His voice had gained a certain tone, and the soft movements of his fingers against Aziraphale’s hip had started kneading the flesh there in a way that was unmistakably  _ interested _ . 

Aziraphale felt his desire effortlessly renewed at the very thought that Crowley could be ready again so soon. “I suppose we shall, my dear,” he said, moving against the warm, languid demon and pulling Crowley closer with a hand against his low back. He smiled as he started a trail of soft slow kisses across Crowley’s cheek, heading for his lips. “I suppose we’d better get started.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you fair commenter, for pointing out what I'd missed

The next morning, Crowley woke early and made his way downstairs. He planned on sneaking out to get some pastries from Aziraphale's favorite bakery, a few blocks from the shop. He opened the door and stepped out, only to stop in his tracks at the sight of the Bentley, black and gray and glossy and gleaming, parked right in front of the bookshop, in all it's glory.

"Hello love," he whispered, trailing a reverent hand across the car's length before climbing inside and starting it up. Queen's "You're My Best Friend" blared out of the car's speakers as he pulled it out into traffic and sped off toward the bakery, ignoring the terrified pedestrians that leapt out of his path. 


End file.
